Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) is planning to find its own resources to fund one of the country’s biggest platinum project, Great Dyke Investment (GDI) in Darwendale as the company seek to have full control of the project for the country.
Kelvin Sungiso
Last year, Russia’s Vi Holdings pulled out of the project located on the mineral-rich Great Dyke of Zimbabwe. The long-delayed project is expected to have a peak production capacity of 860,000oz of platinum group metals (PGM) a year.
Speaking at a Media tour on Friday, GDI Chief Operating Officer and KMH technical director Munashe Shava said the owners of the project have concluded that it would not be ideal to give such a big project to foreign investors as this would lead the country to lose focus related to mining growth.
According to Shava, the project which was initially planned to start production in 2021, has the potential to be exploited for five decades.
He said investors usually come with their own terms resulting in compromising on some of the plans intended for growth.
“For your own information, this project is now valued at over US$2.5 billion and with a life of mine of over 56 years. The approach now is to say let’s find our own resources to develop this project because it doesn’t make sense to bring in the Chinese, the Americans or other Investors who have got money to come here and get into a project of this magnitude. And also come in and bring in new conditions which might affect the strategy of having a Refinery because Investors will come with their arrangements,” Shava said.
He also said that GDI was planning to build a Refinery but he however said that for it to be feasible, it was important for all the platinum producers to have one Refinery.
“Investment into the Refinery is no mean business and it also requires funding not probably from the operations or from the Investors. We might need to arrange a separate structure to be able to do that. It will be good for Zimbabwe as a country to have its own Refinery, there are no two ways about it, but it’s a journey that we need to walk and that conversation is underway within the Platinum Producers Association,” he said.
The Darwendale mining project includes the development of underground mining activities to extract PGM, as well as processing facilities.
Zimbabwe is seeking to exploit its reserves of platinum, which is used in catalytic converters to limit auto emissions, at a time when vehicle manufacturers are boosting the production of electric cars powered by lithium batteries.
