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# A South African gold miner made R4.3 billion from mine waste other companies left behind
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/drdgold-wants-a-look-at-other-miners-waste-dumps-after-its-best-year-on-record/
- Published: 2026-08-21T02:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T02:30:00.000Z
- Description: The tailings retreatment group nearly doubled earnings to R4.25 billion, then used the results stage to ask its rivals to open their dumps to it.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

A closing mine leaves behind a hole in the ground, a processing plant nobody needs and decades of waste that costs money to look after. DRDGold spent the past year proving the waste is the part worth having, and it now wants a look at everyone else's.

The company reprocesses old mine dumps around Johannesburg for the gold still sitting in them, and the year to June 2026 was the best in its history. Revenue rose 42% to R11.2 billion, operating profit 83% to R6.45 billion and headline earnings 89% to R4.25 billion, on a 40% rise in the average rand gold price received to R2 289 250 a kilogram. Gold production barely moved, at 4 839kg, marginally ahead of the year before and above guidance.

## What DRDGold is offering other miners

Chief executive Niel Pretorius made the pitch from the results presentation stage. “Let us through the front door. Maybe we could do something with your tails,” he said. The shareholder letter confirms the search has already started on two continents, Africa and South America, for copper as well as gold.

The version he described to Daily Maverick is aimed at a large listed miner with forty years of tailings on its footprint and a mine closing in four or five years. Rather than dismantle the plant, DRDGold would repurpose it to run at higher volume, push the retreated material back into the hole and do part of the rehabilitation that way. “We could be a service-provider/equity partner on many of these things. We bring the capital, that gives us access to a portion of the proceeds, and we assume a measure of the risk,” Pretorius said.

## What Sibanye got out of it

There is one worked example, and Pretorius pointed straight at it. Sibanye-Stillwater's Far West operation was an environmental liability; folded into DRDGold, with Sibanye taking a 50.1% stake in the business, it is now an equity holding he valued at around R15 billion. Sibanye had also earned, or would earn following the latest dividend, R955 million in returns in the past two years.

Money is moving the other way too. DRDGold spent R3.5 billion during the year on Vision 2028, its roughly R10 billion programme to lift throughput at Ergo and Far West Gold Recoveries and push annual production towards six tonnes by 2028, and still ended debt-free with R2.8 billion in cash and a record final dividend of 120 cents a share. Guidance for the year ahead is 160 000 to 170 000 ounces and about R3 billion more capital. Shareholders keep the full swing of the gold price either way: the company has promised to stay unhedged for as long as it can.