South African Gold Output Plunges Most Since 2015 in September

(Bloomberg) -- South African gold production plunged the most in almost four years in September.

Output retreated 19 percent from a year earlier, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said in a statement Thursday. Overall mining output fell 1.8 percent, while production of platinum-group metals increased 7.2 percent, it said.

Key Insights

• Producers in South Africa, which operate some of the world’s deepest and most labor intensive mines, have been forced to reduce output and cut thousands of jobs as they struggle to contain operating costs. The continent’s most-industrialized economy fell into its first recession in almost a decade in the second quarter.
• Sixty-nine workers have died in South African mines so far this year, with the nation’s gold mines accounting for more than half of the fatalities, Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe said last month.

--With assistance from Felix Njini.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rene Vollgraaff in Johannesburg at rvollgraaff@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benjamin Harvey at bharvey11@bloomberg.net, Ana Monteiro

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