Savuka Gold Mine

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Savuka Gold Mine was owned by AngloGold Ashanti and was part of their West Wits Deep Level operations, and in 2013 it was combined with the adjacent Tau Tona Gold Mine which is also owned by Anglo. In August 2017 Anglo announced its intention to put Tau Tona, which includes Savuka, on care and maintenance and potentially decomission them. At the time Savuka had already produced for 59 years and part of that was a previous 10 year extension. Tau Tona had been producing for 36 years having poured its first gold in 1981. Savuka was subsequently closed but Tau Tona was left operating until early 2018 when it was placed on orderly closure.

Savuka was comprised of 3 shafts to access the orerbody, the main suface, and underground secondary and tertiary shafts. To mine the ore typical longwall, sequential grid mining, and conventional mining methods were used and over time the longwall operation was converted to sequential grid. The main reef exploited was the Carbon Leader Reef (CLR) which occurred at depths between 2,600m to 3,500m and some mining was done on the Ventersdorp Contact Reef (VCR) which is about 900m above the CLR. Processing was done in 2 stages werhe the initial process was done at the Savuka plant where ore was crushed then fed into a Carbon-In-Pulp circuit. After that the ore was sent to the Mponeng plant for electrowinning and smelting into a final gold bar product.

Locally the CLR is typically 2 meters thick and is comprised on three main stratigraphic units. Unit 1 is is the most economically important and covers the mine area in the form of a large sheet. Unit 2 is a channel deposit that was mined and unit 3 is the oldest of the units. Within the reef gold mineralisation occurs in two metre thick quartz pebble conglomerates and gold is accumulated with pyrite and carbon, along with quartz as the gangue material.

Regionally Savuka is located in the Witwatersrand Basin which is a late Archean-aged basin that is comprised of an inter-bedded sequence of arenaceous and argillaceous sediments. The basin is located on the Kaapvaal Craton and is 6 km thick, 300 km wide from northeast to southwest, and 100 km wide northwest to southeast. All sections of the basin except the northern section are overlain by 4km of volcanic and sedimentary rocks from the Archaean, Proterozoic and Mesozoic period.

In 2009 an earthquake and aftershocks damanged the main shaft and other infrastructure, as well as causing some underground dams to burst and flood the mine from below the second level. The other shafts only suffered damage to the main supporting structures for the CLR production areas. Anglo decided to restore the mine and spent $30 million to get the it back to production state. That work was completed in 2011.

Savuka, as well as other operating mines in the area, were affected by the closure of the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine in 2013 and the subsequent cessation of underground water pumping. The rising water posed serious risk the Tau Tona underground workings. The Covalent Water Company was then formed to continue pumping operations at Blyvoor 4 and 6 shafts. Even with the pumping there was still water build up at Blyvoor shaft 5 that could flow into the Savuka workings, and then Tau Tona. To address this an underground pipeline was built from Savuka to Tau Tona to pump the water to surface.