Ministry, ZMF in strategic gold service centres partnership
Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF)‘s FS Mining and the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development‘s Defold Mine (Pvt Ltd) have penned a strategic joint venture meant to operationalise gold centres in various provinces, with the first centre expected by June this year.
Prince Sunduzani and Rudairo Mapuranga
The signing ceremony was held at the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development Headquarters in the capital last week.
Gold Milling Centres are a concept that was enunciated by the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development to establish service centres that are a one-stop-shop for the miner whereby access to milling services, consumables and technical expertise is readily available.
The gold centres have for a long time been moot and implementation of the idea was moving at a snail’s pace.
The partnerships between Government’s Defold Mine Private Limited and FS Mining are set to augment the activities of small scale miners in various provinces.
These provide equipment and other operational needs of small scale miners and at the same time create a one-stop-shop for all the gold needs of a small scale miner.
This is meant to plug illegal activities in the gold sector, capacitate small scale miners and increase gold deliveries to Fidelity Gold Refinery (FGR).
Small scale miners account for 60% of the country’s gold deliveries to Fidelity Gold Refinery (FGR) and if capacitated have the potential to produce more.
FS Mining Acting Chief Executive Officer Mr Morgan Mugawu said the joint venture with Defold will go beyond talk but put action as it is fully capacitated to set up the required structure.
“This joint venture is an operational venture to capacitate the small-scale miners right from production up to milling. We are going to put up milling structures. We have been preaching before that we are going to have a one-stop-shop whereby you’ll see everything at the milling centre under one umbrella. We aim to increase gold deliveries to fidelity printers,” said Mr Mugawu.
“In terms of capacitation, when we talk of the equipment, we will have the milling stations, if we talk of gold centres we will have those. When we talk of the educational facilities to ensure our miners have an entrepreneurship mind we’ve got the systems. FS mining has the technical team, business and operational teams to see this thing through. We are looking at about $100 million for the whole project,”. Mugawu concluded.