JSE-listed gold recovery company DRDGold applies its business model to create value commercially, socially and environmentally, with sustainable development the golden thread that informs the company’s strategic thinking, says CEO Niël Pretorius.

Companies that practise sustainable development consider the environment and socioeconomic realities of the areas in which they operate, and in their pursuit of profit, aim to integrate the two aspects, he outlines.

“If we are not conscious of the socioeconomic realities of the communities where we operate, we could potentially find ourselves in an unstable environment.”

DRDGold implements programmes to assist the people in the communities where it operates in becoming self- sustainable. The company invests in projects that it believes will improve the quality of life in surrounding communities by alleviating poverty and improving youth education. These projects include the broad-based agricultural livelihoods programme, the Crown complex rehabilitation vegetation programme, and the maths, science and accounting teaching programme.

The broad-based agricultural livelihoods programme, for example, focuses on empowering individuals, households, microfarmers and cooperatives to produce vegetables and crops at their homes to address food security challenges and enable them to enter the economic mainstream by selling excess produce.
DRDGold partnered with social services organisation Umsizi Sustainable Social Solutions to establish and implement the programme. The programme was launched in 2015 in the communities of Tsakane, Geluksdal and Daveyton, adjacent to DRDGold’s tailings deposition facility in Brakpan, in Gauteng.
By the end of the 2018 financial year, 877 households had benefited from the programme, with more than 61 training sessions completed and more than 90 organic food producers selling and earning an income from their urban farming businesses.
So successful has the initiative proved that the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality is interested in introducing the broad-based agricultural livelihoods programme on the West Rand.

Indaba and Projects
DRDGold will attend the Investing in African Mining Indaba that will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from February 4 to 7. Pretorius will deliver a presentation that will include profiling the company’s recently acquired Far West Gold Recoveries project.
The first phase of the project was commissioned last month and Pretorius states that the project is on track to achieve full production of 500 000 t a month in the first quarter.
Moreover, DRDGold will discuss the potential of the project, and its Ergo operation, with interested stakeholders.
Pretorius is looking forward to the opportunity to network with stakeholders and believes that South Africa has “turned a corner” with the appointment of President Cyril Ramaphosa and Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe.
DRDGold will sustain the work that has been done at its Ergo operation and production and ramp-up is expected to start this month at the Far West Gold Recoveries project, he concludes.