INVESTORS AND MEDIA 
Media release
Johannesburg, 25 May 2023: Gold Fields Limited (Gold Fields) (JSE, NYSE: GFI) yesterday held its 2023 Annual General Meeting (AGM) at its offices in Johannesburg as well as virtually. All the resolutions, bar one, where approved by the requisite majority. The detailed voting outcome is recorded in the SENS release at: https://senspdf.jse.co.za/documents/SENS_20230524_S475592.pdf
The Chairperson of the Gold Fields Board of Directors, Yunus Suleman, and the Chairperson of the Social, Ethics and Transformation (SET) Committee of the Board, Jacqueline McGill, presented at the AGM. Their speeches follow below.
Speech by Chairperson Yunus Suleman
Dear stakeholders and Gold Fields colleagues
It has been almost a year since I took over as Chairperson of Gold Fields from Cheryl Carolus at the 2022 AGM. Looking back, it has been an eventful year for the company, with the takeover bid for Yamana Gold, leadership changes, and two strategic corporate transactions announced this year.
Despite some challenges, I am proud to report that Gold Fields has emerged in a healthy financial and operational state and continues to build on its leading ESG position. It illustrated to us, as the Board, once again that Gold Fields has capable and deep leadership in place.
Clearly, challenges remain. In terms of safety, we recorded a fatal incident at our St Ives mine in Australia in October and five serious injuries during the year. In Q1 2023, we suffered a fatal incident at our Tarkwa mine in Ghana, and two contractors died after a vehicle incident at the Galiano Gold-managed Asanko JV, also in Ghana. On behalf of the Board, I would once again like to extend our deepest condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of our deceased colleagues. The Board and management remain strongly committed to continuously strengthening our safety behaviours, processes, systems and standards to ensure that all of our people return home safely every day.
2022 was the year in which the company started implementing its three-pillar strategy that was approved by the Board and launched in December 2021.
In terms of Pillar 1 - maximising the potential from our current assets through people and innovation - Gold Fields once again met its production and cost guidance in 2022 and generated almost US$900m in cash. This enabled us to fund growth, in particular the construction of Salares Norte, pay record dividends to shareholders and reduce net debt to the Company’s lowest level in over a decade.
We have been one of the top performers among our peers since early last year and the share price has increased by 67% (JSE) and by 48% (NYSE) since the start of the year. While this in part reflects the stronger gold price it also mirrors investors’ confidence in our near-term growth options as well as our ability to consistently meet production and cost guidance and as such translating this gold price to the bottom-line.
With regards to our people, management has initiated a number of programmes to strengthen our culture, which we identified as a key enabler for the implementation of our strategy by unlocking the full potential of all our people. The Board actively supports building a culture of care, respect and inclusivity among our increasingly diverse workforce. Above all, this means keeping our people both physically and psychologically safe. As such, Gold Fields expanded its definition of zero harm to embed a zero-tolerance approach to harassment, bullying and discrimination. The Board commissioned an independent review enabling employees to share their experiences and we will use their feedback to work with management to address shortcomings and capitalise on opportunities for improvement.
Building on our leading commitments to ESG is the 2nd pillar of the company’s strategy. Gold Fields committed in December 2021 to a range of 2030foc targets for our six sustainability priorities – three of them focused on our people and stakeholders and the other three dealing with our environmental impact.
We started implementing these targets in 2022 and are on track to meet them by 2030 – as you would have seen in the ESG webcast Gold Fields presented earlier this month. Highlights included the launch of two new solar plants at South Deep and Gruyere and the US$913m in value created for our host communities.
Host community value creation is a programme we are particularly proud of because host communities are one of our closest and most important stakeholders.
Although we did not proceed with the Yamana Gold transaction, we remain committed to growing the value and quality of our portfolio of assets, as the third pillar of our strategy. Gold Fields’ portfolio remains strong in the near term, and we expect to grow to 2.8Moz by 2025 as Salares Norte starts production and South Deep continues its ramp-up. Our Australian mines continue to achieve annual production of 1Moz as a result of the sustained investment in near-mine exploration again replacing reserves in 2022.
We tasked management to explore quality expansion and replacement options beyond 2026, when Group production is set to decline as two of our mines, Damang and Cerro Corona, start to see slowing production.
In line with this guidance, on 16 March 2023, Gold Fields announced the proposed JV between our Tarkwa mine in Ghana and the neighbouring Iduapriem mine owned by AngloGold Ashanti, with Gold Fields being the managing operator. If supported by the Ghanaian government, it will create Africa's largest gold mine, with almost immediate production and financial benefits.
And earlier this month, we announced the joint venture with Osisko Mining to develop the world class underground Windfall project in Quebec, Canada. This deal not only provides us with long-term, quality growth but also gives us an entry into Canada, a Tier 1 mining jurisdiction which we have long sought access to. We have already transferred the C$300m required as part of the signature payment with the remaining C$300m payable on receipt of all the required regulatory approvals.
Both of these transactions were welcomed by shareholders and investors as an affirmation of our growth strategy.
Our strong operational performance and execution of these key strategic transactions are testament to the strength of the management and operational teams that we have in place. I would like to thank these teams for their hard work and commitment in ensuring that the strategy implementation proceeded so successfully last year.
I want to particularly thank the departing executives – Chris Griffith, Taryn Leishman, Avishkar Nagaser, Richard Butcher and Brett Mattison – for their years, and in some cases decades, of professionalism and commitment to Gold Fields.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my fellow directors, many of whom have been on the Board with me for several years. Their support and guidance during my first year as Gold Fields’ Chairperson were invaluable.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank the people of Gold Fields. The fact that we emerged from a challenging year with an industry-leading financial, operational and ESG performance is, first and foremost, a reflection of the quality of the teams we have in place at our mines and in our offices. I thank the 23,000-plus employees and contractors of Gold Fields for ensuring we continue to create enduring value for all our stakeholders.
Speech by SET Chairperson Jacqueline McGill
Dear stakeholders
As Gold Fields’ Chair of the Social Ethics and Transformation Committee, I am pleased to report on the Company's commitment to strengthening its relationships and making a positive impact for all our stakeholders, including through value creation.
As the Chair of the Board reported just now, ESG issues are fully integrated into the operational management of our mines and projects. This is where stakeholders impacted by our operations receive the attention they deserve and where the management teams can best address the issues raised and mitigate the risks faced by them. At a corporate level, the teams provide the framework within which the operations manage these relationships.
Our key stakeholders – employees, business partners, communities, civil society, governments and investors – rightly expect and demand greater attention to ESG. Our strong stakeholder relationships and the value we distribute to them support more than just our social licence to operate – they are at the core of our purpose of creating enduring value beyond mining.
As such Gold Fields has embedded three critical social priorities into its 2030 ESG targets. These targets – zero serious injuries and fatalities, greater gender diversity and expanded value creation for all stakeholders – will guide our journey in ensuring that our stakeholders benefit from our presence in a meaningful and enduring way and are protected from the risks that mining brings with it.
The three environmentally focused ESG target areas – decarbonisation, tailings management and water stewardship – also impact our stakeholders as well as wider society and our teams actively seek to manage these risks, including through collaboration with our industry peers.
I want to focus though on Gold Fields’ social priorities.
Our people’s safety comes first, which is why we focus so heavily on safety and wellbeing. Critical to our employees is that the company has expanded its definition of zero harm to include the psychological wellbeing of our people.
We strive to create workplaces that are free of discrimination, bullying, and harassment, particularly sexual harassment, and a culture that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusivity. This is not an easy journey, but one that starts with listening to our employees, gauging their expectations and finding out about their concerns.
Over the past year, Gold Fields conducted several workplace surveys, including one by world-renowned expert Elizabeth Broderick, to understand how our people experience our workplaces, how we can address issues that are potentially causing harm and how, ultimately, we can ensure safe and respectful workplaces. Once received, the findings of these comprehensive reviews will be assessed by the Board and management, with improvement actions to be planned and implementation commencing in H2 2023
I should add that there is already some great work underway throughout the business, and I particularly commend the Australian region on the work it has done in creating its Respectful Workplaces #listen program and leadership materials. This is already fostering some important conversations in the business about what a respectful workplace looks like for all of our people.
Gold Fields also seeks to collaborate with its employees to create and nurture a culture that attracts and retains a diverse, highly skilled, and talented workforce. While we have made progress in improving the proportion of women in our workforce – it has risen from approximately 15% six years ago to 23% at the end of last year - we still have work to do to attract and retain female talent.
A focused retention and recruitment programme is in place to ensure that we achieve our target of 30% female representation by 2030.
The third priority focus is value creation for stakeholders, particularly host communities. Given that the interests of our communities have a strong influence on, and are impacted by, our operations, we need to ensure that they see the benefits of mining. As such we have created between US$500m and US$900m in community value every year for the past seven years. This amounts to almost US$5.3bn in total, which is a sustained and significant investment in the social and economic wellbeing of our host communities.
This value creation strategy has three primary pillars – host community employment, procurement and Social Economic Development investment. Of the US$5.3bn mentioned above, approximately US$4.4bn was in the form of procurement to supplier and contractors based in host communities, US$760m in salaries to host community employees and US$130m in socio-economic development programmes in these communities.
Looking back at 2022, 52% of our workforce – or 9,473 people – were employed from our host communities. During the year, our total procurement spending amounted to US$2.30bn, 97% of which was spent on businesses based in host countries. Of this amount US$747m, or 31%, was committed to host community enterprises. During the year we introduced favourable payment terms for small and medium-sized enterprises operating in our host communities by committing to paying them within 14 days.
To further strengthen our community impact, we have framed and conceptualised a pipeline of legacy programmes for implementation from 2023 to 2030 by addressing our host communities’ most pressing development needs and opportunities, including climate change resilience and economic diversification. The first legacy programme is currently being finalised and will be launched before the end of the year, namely the development of a sustainable dairy value chain benefiting farmers adjacent to our Cerro Corona mine in northern Peru. In preparation for these programmes we worked with multiple partners in constructing 210 fully-lined micro-reservoirs in the area.
It would be remiss of me not to mention our relationship with our host governments. These are not without challenges and for the past year we have been dealing with volatile political and economic situations in South Africa, Ghana, Chile and Peru. This has seen some of the governments increasing their pressure on the resources sector to increase contributions to government revenue.
We are dealing with this through stronger engagement with our host governments, both directly and via industry associations, and believe that sound judgement will prevail. We also seek to communicate the benefits we bring to our host governments, through taxes, royalties, jobs and infrastructure investments, more effectively. On balance, these countries and Australia and Canada remain favourable mining jurisdictions with sound rules of law and reasonable economic policies in place. In conclusion, I would like to stress that the Board is committed to Gold Fields’ ESG journey and will provide oversight and governance on this critical aspect of our business. We will continue to address broader societal responsibility issues, including the safety, health, and wellbeing of our people, a diverse and inclusive workforce, widening wealth gaps and addressing the impacts companies, in particular mines, have on the adjacent environment.
