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Sibanye-Stillwater, a South African mining company led by prominent businessman Neal Froneman, has announced that its PGM operations in Montana will halt operations for four to six weeks.
“Operations at the Stillwater mine are expected to be suspended for approximately 4-6 weeks before safe access to the mine is restored and production can resume,” the group stated in a press release obtained by Billionaires.Africa.
The decision to halt the group’s PGM operations in Montana was prompted by regional floods that disrupted the mine’s operations on June 13.
The group’s operations were largely unaffected, but several bridges and roads near the mine were damaged, limiting access and necessitating the rerouting of water, tailing, and other piping.
Stillwater’s Montana mine accounts for about 60 percent of mined production from its U.S. PGM operations. Meanwhile, access to its East Boulder mine and Columbus metallurgical facilities remained intact, and both facilities remained operational during the flooding events.
In an effort to jump-start the group’s Montana PGM operation, remediation work on the mine complex’s east-west access bridge has begun and is expected to be completed in four weeks.
Froneman, CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, stated that the company will continue to work with local authorities and other stakeholders to expedite the region’s recovery, with the aim to resume operations at the Stillwater section in due course.
Sibanye-Stillwater is a multinational precious metal mining company with operations in South Africa. It is involved in gold and base metals mining, as well as projects in South Africa and the Americas.
Under Froneman’s leadership, the company has grown into the world’s largest primary producer of platinum, the world’s second-largest primary producer of palladium, and the world’s third-largest producer of gold.
The group’s U.S. operations were disrupted nearly two weeks after it announced plans to restart its operations at its gold mines in South Africa, three months after a miners’ strike led to their halt.
