Miners dig deeper - but will gold still go up?

The easy gold may have gone, but new technology means South African miners can now dig as deep as 4km down. How much will it cost them? And will they be able to meet demand?

Digging yourself into the deepest man-made hole in the world is pretty radical. Not even a land-short South African gold miner would shovel out his Rand unless he had confidence that what is down there is going to go up!

Getting into the Guinness Book of Records on this basis is too expensive unless the results are going pay off. So it's a pretty strong positive signal for gold that Gold Fields, the world's fourth biggest producer, and Anglo Gold Ashanti, the world's third, are both putting their money into going 4km underground.

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