Africa's Biggest Gold Deposit Becomes Burden as Prices Plunge

``The failure to exploit South Deep profitably is hastening the decline of South Africa's gold-mining industry, which has produced a third of all the world's bullion over 120 years. The country is today ranked sixth in the world among gold producers, down from first just eight years ago... South Deep, with the potential to produce 700,000 ounces a year costing as little as $900 an ounce for the next 70 years, may change that. Yet its complex ore body has so far proved too difficult for Gold Fields to extract profitably, even after $1 billion of investment over nine years.''