What Is The Deepest Underground Mine In The World?

Our company operates in some of the most challenging environments in the world and are regularly invested in pushing our components further. We’re always doing research into the future of the mining industry since mines are going deeper than ever before. In this article we are going to discuss the deepest mine in the world.

The Mponeng Gold Mine is located in South Africa in the Gauteng province. This is currently the deepest operating mine in the world and it is changing hands in February 2020. Operating at a range of 3.16 km to 3.84 km under the surface, the mine is set to expand to a shaft bottom of 4.22 km with future digs through to 2027.

Production of this mine was halted in early March 2020 due to a seismic event. Even with full safety gear in place, this unfortunately cost the lives of three miners. The area is gold rich and the mine was producing over 244,000 ounces of gold in 2019.

This location got started in 1999 but the original gold processing plant for surface mining is located nearby and was commissioned in 1986. Neighboring lines for the area were closed in 2017 and the majority of the reserves from nearby mines were transferred into the ownership of Mponeng.

The ore reserves in this mine are estimated to be around 36.19 million tons of gold. Mining and processing takes place through grid mining techniques to the shaft system. The mine is divided into two survey shafts into sub shafts. The plan has the ability to process over 160,000 tons of ore in a given month.

Ensuring that our team can get involved in large operations like this with our equipment guarantees that we can take on any challenge. This mine is truly the inspiration for the future of mining technology!

This post was written by Justin Tidd, Director at Becker Mining Systems! For nearly a half a century, Becker Mining has been at the forefront of industry safety. Becker/SMC is the industry’s leader in increasingly more sophisticated electrical control systems. Most of the major innovations, design features and specialized electrical components have been developed by Becker/SMC.