The rusted and dilapidated infrastructure at the defunct Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (Zisco) does not spell the end of its revival, only the end of the old plant, Mutapa Investment Fund Deputy Chief Investment Officer Ernest Denhere has said, as he laid out a pragmatic, resource backed pathway to breathing life back into the country’s industrial steelmaking heart.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
Speaking during a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee tour to the fund’s mining assets, Denhere gave a frank assessment of the challenges while pointing to the overwhelming advantages that still make Zisco’s revival a realistic national project.
“The only part that is the plant, as you saw, yes, it’s not oxidised, it’s rusty, and certainly you would need to bring in a new plant,” Denhere said. But he immediately pivoted to the fundamentals that truly matter in mining and heavy industry: the resources.
“If you’ve got the resource, that’s your big thing. There’s an iron ore resource at this point, there’s limestone, the coal is there,” he said. “So the foundations to resuscitating it, in terms of putting in a new plant, now depend on what is the cost of those technologies.”
A steel ecosystem springs to life around Zisco
Crucially, Denhere acknowledged a reality often lost in the revival debate: Zisco is not entirely dead. While a full conventional steelmaking operation has yet to be restored, parts of the entity are already active and integrated into Zimbabwe’s emerging steel value chain.
The limestone from the Manhize steel plant is coming from Zisco, the Deputy CIO confirmed, while Lancashire Steel, a Zisco subsidiary, is currently operating, taking steel feed from Dinson Iron and Steel Company to produce finished wire products. Lancashire Steel is reportedly poised to resume wire mill production, with plans to manufacture wire rods, drawn wire, barbed wire, and galvanised wire.
These partial operations demonstrate that the strategic integration MIF has been championing since taking over Zisco is already delivering concrete industrial linkages.
Strategic integration: the MIF advantage
The transfer of Zisco into the MIF portfolio through Statutory Instrument 58 of 2026 was a deliberate strategic act.
By housing Zisco alongside Hwange Colliery, Sable Chemicals, the National Railways of Zimbabwe, and ZESA, all under one sovereign wealth umbrella, the government is betting that vertical and horizontal integration can solve a problem that isolated management could not. “The coke batteries need coal; Hwange supplies it. The furnaces need oxygen; Sable provides it by pipeline. The plant needs to move iron ore in bulk; NRZ is the rail backbone,” one parliamentary oversight report noted. This integrated strategy is already starting to yield real synergies.
Weighing the technical options
Denhere’s comments come as the MIF finalises its technical assessment of what form a revived Zisco should take. The options being considered include:
Full conventional steel plant revival using modernised blast furnace technology;
Integration with existing and planned Dinson capacity to focus on specialised steel products that complement Manhize’s output;
Phased rehabilitation starting with lower capital intermediate processing, such as limestone beneficiation into burnt lime for steelmaking, before expanding into full steel production.
Downstream first approach leveraging Lancashire Steel’s existing operations to generate early revenue while larger capital is raised.
The decision will ultimately depend on a cost-benefit analysis of the available technologies.
“Are you only doing a steel plant, or are you going with the limestone? Let’s look at other things we can do. What should we do with zinc and fineries? So we’re still looking at all the options,” Denhere said.
A ‘mammoth task’ with a nation-building prize
Denhere did not sugarcoat the scale of the challenge. “Yes, it’s a mammoth task,” he admitted. But he returned to the core strategic truth that underpins the entire revival effort: resource-rich nations have the fundamental right and opportunity to build industries around their natural endowments.
“Whenever you’re endowed with natural resources as a country, you’ve got the opportunity to start new industries,” he said, adding with quiet confidence: “I think we’ll be able to unpack it and hopefully find a solution.”
At its peak in the 1990s, Zisco produced up to 1.2 million tonnes of steel annually, directly employed over 5,500 workers, and supported an estimated 50,000 jobs in downstream industries such as construction, engineering, and manufacturing. Zimbabwe currently imports over US$256 million worth of steel products each year, a massive drain on foreign currency that could be redirected into domestic value addition.
A revived Zisco, operating alongside Dinson and Lancashire, would not only reduce that import bill and conserve foreign currency but also expand the national tax base through industrial activity, payroll taxes, and downstream manufacturing growth.
For Zimbabwe, the path forward is pragmatic: accept that the old plant cannot be revived, but the resources are there, the ecosystem is forming, and the sovereign wealth fund has the long-term mandate to engineer a solution. As Denhere put it, the task is mammoth, but with the right technology, the right partners, and the right policy environment, it is entirely possible.
