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SA platinum miner Implats says to slash 13,400 jobs

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JOHANNESBURG: Platinum producer Impala Platinum will slash about a third of its workforce over two years in one of the biggest rounds of job cuts by one mining company in living memory in South Africa as the platinum industry faces a day of reckoning.


The number of platinum miners employed in the world’s largest producer of the precious metal has fallen from a peak of almost 200,000 in 2008 to 175,000 in the face of depressed prices and soaring costs, fuelling labour and social unrest.


Implats’ planned lay-offs announced on Thursday are focused on its labour-intensive, conventional Rustenburg operations, where the number of shafts will be reduced to six from 11 with production cut to 520,000 ounces per annum from 750,000 ounces.


The company clarified that the number of planned job cuts was 13,400, not the 13,000 specified in its statement earlier, which it said was a rounded figure.


The number of jobs on the line over two years, out of a workforce of about 40,000, is even steeper than plans by miner Sibanye-Stillwater to cut 12,600 at Lonmin over three years. — Reuters


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