Researcher: Ignitious Chauke, University of Venda
Supervisor: Dr Caston Sigauke, University of Venda
This study approximate monthly gold production from Sibanye-Stillwater South Africa (SA) gold operations based on five sigmoid models. The studied models were Gompertz, Gaussian, Probit and the Hill, which were used to forecast the future. Although all estimated five models offered a good realistic estimate, the Hill model was de-fined to better approximate the observed gold output pat-tern in Sibanye-Stillwater mines. The model has been chosen based on its high variance (R2) and the lowest error (RMSE) and information loss (AIC) value. The model indicated that the production of gold would be too low by 2035 given the current trend towards gold production persists in Sibanye-Stillwater (South Africa operation) mines continues. The Hill model findings were also backed ARIMA (0,1,2)(1,0,1)[4] model showed that the monthly gold production will continue to decrease until 2025.
