KALGOORLIE (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Gold Fields on Tuesday said that it would look to optimise its portfolio following the acquisition of TSX-listed Yamana Gold, and the start of its Salares Norte project, in Chile.

Presenting at the second day of the Diggers and Dealers conference, Gold Fields CEO Chris Griffith said that with the addition of the Yamana assets and the start of Salares North, Gold Fields could produce more than four-million ounces.

Speaking to Mining Weekly Online on the sidelines of the conference, Griffith said the company had identified opportunities for portfolio rationalisation, but that some of these projects could be removed from the hit list through further exploration.

“We have a few internally that in a combined company may be up for disposal. Some of the Yamana assets are smaller, in terms of production but they have enormous potential, so we have to be very careful.

“You don’t just look at production and say, well a 150 000 oz/y operation is too small for us. Some of these assets have had limited exploration, like Cerro Morrow, in Argentina, where less than 10% of the tenement has been explored. So, it has incredible opportunity. You don’t want to give up any assets before understanding them.

“But there are opportunities for rationalisation - two of our own assets potentially, and potentially two of the new assets. But we want to be sure that when we combine the assets that there is not a huge amount of latent potential that we inadvertently would give up.”

Griffith said that Gold Fields would invest in exploring the new assets following a successful takeover of Yamana Gold, but would use the company’s extensive experience while doing this.

“The bigger group has got a potential to have more exploration done but we also have, we think, superior geotechnical expertise, which means that actually we can probably spend less and get more just with the techniques that we have perfected over many years.

“I think we've got skill and expertise to get more for what we spend and use the group's technical ability and of course cross learnings across our groups to get more out of the assets. It's not just about having more toys to play with, and throwing more money at them. We will be much more strategic in the way that we spend our money,” he added.

Gold Fields in May announced its takeover offer for Yamana Gold, offering 0.6 of its own shares or 0.6 of a Gold Fields American depositary share for each Yamana share. The transaction implies a valuation for Yamana of $6.7-billion.

Yamana has five producing mines, along with a pipeline of development assets, and currently produces around one-million ounces of gold a year.

The board of directors of both companies have backed the transaction, and Gold Fields shareholders are expected to vote on the takeover in October.

Meanwhile, Griffith on Tuesday told Mining Weekly Online that costs for the Salares Norte project were "within spitting distance" of the $860-million initially set aside for project development.

“Salares is one of the few projects in the world at the moment, and certainly in South America, that’s within spitting distance of its original capital and its original timeline. So we are tracking very well according to plan, and depending on what happens with Covid, because we are starting to see another wave in Chile, but at this point we are still tracking to deliver Salares at the end of the first quarter of 2023.”

The mine is targeted to produce around 600 000 oz/y, before levelling out to 450 000 oz/y over the remainder of its 11.5-year mine life.