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Mines/South Africa

Mponeng mine

Mponeng mine, South Africa. Producing, mining gold since 1986.

Why Mponeng is famous

One of the deepest mines in the world. It works the Ventersdorp Contact Reef at 3,160 m to 3,740 m below datum, with development at 3,841 m. The shaft system and plant were commissioned in 1986 and renamed Mponeng in 1999. Output was 333,402 oz in the year to June 2025.1,2,3

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Quartz-pebble conglomerate gold-uranium (Witwatersrand type)

Mponeng today

Where gold is mined todayMining in South Africa

Where next

Mines

Partner ofTauTonaTautona closed in 2017 and is now part of Harmony's Mponeng area.4An example ofWitwatersrand main reef mines, 1886 to 1887Mponeng works reef at 3,160 to 3,740 m. The Witwatersrand main reef was found in 1886.1

Deposit types

An example ofQuartz-pebble conglomerate gold-uranium (Witwatersrand type)Mponeng belongs to the quartz-pebble conglomerate gold-uranium family of deposits.5

Sources

  1. Form 20-F for the year ended 30 June 2025 Harmony Gold Mining (SEC)
  2. Mponeng operation page Harmony Gold
  3. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  4. Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025 AngloGold Ashanti plc (SEC)
  5. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Underground mining equipment by Kaupo Kikkas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0).