Pan African mining company, Bravura, is upbeat about becoming one of the major lithium producers in Zimbabwe in the next 3 years with its state-of-the-art processing plant now 95 percent complete.
Rudairo Mapuranga.
The company, which has the rights to process tailings left by the Kamativi tin mine to extract lithium spodumene, is in the process of creating an AI-instructed plant manufactured in South Africa, which will be installed in Zimbabwe in about 3 months.
Speaking to Mining Zimbabwe on the sidelines of a Ministerial visit by the Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Hon Zhemu Soda, the head of the project, Dr. Tafadzwa Murinzi, said the 30-tonne-per-hour processing plant will take about 7 months to be commissioned.
“Our plant is being manufactured by a contractor in South Africa. It’s about 95% complete and ready for translocation to Zimbabwe. Here on site, we have started the civil works in preparation for the plant’s receipt. So, what we have to do is create the plant foundations. And then, once the plant arrives, it will be installed and commissioned.
“We expect that once we get the necessary permits, the plant should be in Zimbabwe within the next two to three months. It’s a modular plant, so it will come in different modules. And once the components are all on-site, we expect it will take us about four months for the installation and commissioning. So, we’re looking at roughly seven to eight months,” she said.
Dr. Murinzi said the tailings dump spans about 8 years with an estimated 25 million tonnes of dump to be processed by the mining company.
She said in full operation, the mine will employ 500 people, but initially will start with 25 percent.
“Our plant is a 300-tonne-per-hour plant, which translates to about 1.1 million tonnes of tailings being processed, and this translates to about 30,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate per annum, which is about 25 million tonnes, and it is a spodumene grade of approximately 5%, which translates to lithium of about 0.6%. We’re expecting that with our plant capacity, we can mine it over 8 to 10 years. We will employ about 400 to 500 people, but obviously, we’ll begin in the initial phase, employing about 25% of that, and then we’ll only ramp up to about 400 to 500 people when the plant is now operating at a steady state,” Dr. Murinzi said.
The Minister of Mines, Hon Zhemu Soda, speaking at the tour, said the coming in of Bravura to process the dump is of importance towards the realization of the 2030 vision.
“This is a major contribution, given that we are looking forward to the mining industry being a significant contributor towards the realization of our vision 2030. You might also have noticed that this dump was waste and they are salvaging what used to be waste, and now a mineral. And I recall the conversation that we held earlier on. You know, as technology continues to advance and new uses of minerals are discovered, it’s not surprising that even after 100 years, we’ll be coming back. We’re coming here again to scavenge or salvage from the dump that will be produced as waste from the spodumene that they are now working towards. So, we continue to be upbeat about the efforts by Bravura that they can make a contribution towards the realization of our vision. They also intend to employ some people, and obviously that fits into the mantra by His Excellency of leaving no one and no place behind. Once there is some work here, obviously the local people will start to benefit through employment and also through CSR projects,” Hon Soda said.