Simmer and Jack

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The Simmer and Jack Mines Ltd. (before 1924 The Simmer & Jack Gold Mining Co. Ltd. ) is a South African public company , over a period of more than 100 years of gold mines has operated. It was in 1887 by the German August Simmer founded and the Scotsman John Jack and the majority of shares shortly thereafter The Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd sold. The company was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange until 2013 .

Beginnings

The founders August Simmer (left) and John Jack

In February 1886 the decisive gold discoveries were made on the Witwatersrand in South Africa, which shortly afterwards led to the founding of the city of Johannesburg . The Elandsfontein farm was about ten kilometers to the east and belonged to the farmer Sarel Meyer. Simmer & Jack, a trading company from Harrismith that ran a shop in Chrissiesmeer , had taken half of his farm in payment from Sarel Meyer a year earlier. In September 1886, John Jack registered the mining rights in the area of ​​the farm for Simmer & Jack.

When the company was founded in August 1887, August Simmer and John Jack accepted the entrepreneur Sir George Farrar as a partner and member of the management, whose family business imported well drilling machines to South Africa. Harry Struben, who from 1884 had run a small gold mine in Roodepoort , was also accepted into the management . The new miners' settlement was named Germiston after a mansion near John Jack's birthplace .

Further development

The stamping works of the Simmer & Jack gold mine in 1895
Simmer and Jack Mines Ltd shares dated September 1926

The politician and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes , who had gotten rich in the diamond business, saw the gold discoveries as a great opportunity and, together with his partner Charles Rudd , began to buy up farms, mines and mining rights on the Witwatersrand. To finance the company, they founded The Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd. in London . Simmer & Jack was one of the first mines in which it participated.

It soon turned out that the gold deposits were very large, but the pyrite content of the rock at greater depths was too high for an economically successful exploitation with contemporary technology. Only a contact with the Scottish chemist John MacArthur , which John Jack established in 1889, brought the information about the newly invented cyanide process to South Africa and made the great success of South African gold mining possible.

The first decades of the company were marked by political unrest ( Jameson Raid , Second Boer War ), various economic difficulties and very large investments. From 1888, stone was ground in a stamping mill with 25 punches. The facility was continuously enlarged and had 100 stamps from 1895 and 320 stamps from 1899. The mine reached its peak in 1922. By 1935, Simmer & Jack had processed 27,000,000 tons of rock and mined 7,800,000 ounces of gold. The company made a profit of £ 10,000,000 between 1888 and 1935.

In 1965 Gold Fields sold its shares because the gold deposits were almost exhausted. The original mine closed in 1969. In the decades that followed, the company pursued various commitments in gold and uranium mines, such as the Buffelsfontein mine. In 2013 the stock exchange trading of the share was stopped; the stock corporation still exists.

literature

  • The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited (Ed.) The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937
  • Roy Macnab, Gold Their Touchstone, Jonathan Ball Publishers , Johannesburg, 1987, ISBN 0-86850-140-9
  • Eric Rosenthal, gold! Gold! Gold !, The Macmillan Company, London, 1970

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eric Rosenthal, Gold! Gold! Gold !, The Macmillan Company, London, 1970, p. 130
  2. ↑ The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited (Ed.) The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937, p. 53
  3. ↑ The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited (Ed.) The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937, p. 15
  4. ^ Roy Macnab, Gold Their Touchstone, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1987, p. 27
  5. ↑ Gold ( memento of September 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on May 21, 2013
  6. ↑ http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/54/GOLD-FIELDS-OF-SOUTHAFRICA-LTD.html , accessed on May 19, 2013
  7. ↑ The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited (Ed.) The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937, p. 145
  8. ↑ The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited (Ed.) The Gold Fields 1887–1937, London 1937, p. 148
  9. ^ Roy Macnab, Gold Their Touchstone, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1987, p. 242
  10. ↑ http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/buffelsfonteingoldmi/ accessed on May 21, 2013
  11. ↑ http://www.miningweekly.com/article/jse-terminates-simmer-and-jack-listing-2013-03-20 , accessed on May 18, 2013