(Reuters) – South Africa’s Harmony Gold said on Monday it expects to exceed its 1.5 million ounce production target for the full year to June 2025 despite lower output in the first half of the financial year.
Harmony, the top gold producer in South Africa by volume, said in a trading update gold production for the six months to December 2024 was expected to be between 790,000 ounces and 805,000 ounces.
The decline from the 832,349 ounces Harmony produced during the same period a year earlier was mainly due to planned lower output from its South African underground mines and Hidden Valley in Papua New Guinea, where production was boosted in the previous reporting period by ores with higher gold content.
For the second half of the financial year, South African underground recovered grades are expected to be higher than the guided 5.80 grams per ton, driven mainly by a strong performance from Mponeng, the world’s deepest mine.
Harmony, which produced 1.56 million ounces in the full year to June 2024, set a target in the 1.4 million-1.5 million ounce range for the current financial year.
“The Company remains on track to exceed the full-year production guidance,” it said in its half-year production report.
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Sonali Paul)
