South Africa's Chamber of Mines has recently released figures that estimate about 35tonnes of gold a year is being stolen from South African mines. That amounts to about 8% of the total gold produced - costing the industry some $300m. "Gold miners profits would be about a third higher without the thefts," claimed Anton van Achterberg, a spokesman for the chamber.
While the SACM did not estimate platinum thefts, Lonplats has identified a similar problem of platinum thefts from its mines. After auditing its mine production figures for 1998-99, it discovered that while the amount of unprocessed metal was...