Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources

DRDGOLD’s attributable Mineral Resources increased by 6% from 56.4Moz in FY009 to 60.0Moz in FY2010. Attributable Mineral Reserves increased by 21% from 6.0Moz in 2009 to 7.3Moz in 2010.

The rise in attributable Mineral Resources can mainly be ascribed to the underground operations at Blyoor. The underground block modelling process benefited from a good deal of attention and areas available for furture mining were all scrutinised and changed where required. The other operations all had lesser amounts of movement due to normal depletions and reconciliations.

The reason for the increase in DRDGOLD’s Mineral Reserves was the more favourable gold price used for declaration compared with that for the previous year. Of the total reserve increase, 15.7% was owing to the higher gold price, which resulted in a more favourable pay limit and thus in a larger portion of the underground resource becoming available for mining at Blyvoor. This, along with new solutions to past deposition challenges, also contributed to a 7.8% increase in reserves at Crown. Normal monthly depletions and reconciliations explain any decreases at the operations.

Reserves and resources statements as at 30 June 2010

• Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources statements
• Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources statements (PDF - 433KB)

Attributable Reserve ounces (2010-11) vs gold price sensitivity

Total resource variance year on year

Total reserve variance year on year