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Oliver Kazunga
Senior Business
ZIMBABWE’S largest mining group, Kuvimba Mining House (KMH), is targeting an 8 percent jump in gold output this year to 3 500kg, underpinned by increased ore volumes and processing plant efficiencies.
In the financial year that ended March 31, 2024, KMH whose active mines under the gold cluster are Freda Rebecca, Shamva, and Jena, produced 3 240kg of the metal.
Increased production of gold, the country’s single largest export, has become even more critical as Zimbabwe looks to build reserves to support its precious metal (mainly gold) and forex reserves-backed currency. Zimbabwe is targeting to produce 40 tonnes this year from 30,1 tonnes last year.
The country’s gold production reached a record of 35,3 tonnes in 2022.
In an interview during a tour of KMH’s Bindura-based operation, Freda Rebecca, KMH head of the gold cluster Mr Patrick Maseva-Shayawabaya, who is also Freda’s managing director said: “For those three companies, we produced 3 240kg of gold for the year to March 2024. In terms of contribution to production, Freda contributed about 70 percent of the 3 240kg.
“This year, also for those three companies we are also looking at gold production to be at about 3 500kg split as follows 70 percent from Freda, Shamva 20 percent and Jena 10 percent.
“The increase, in terms of production, we’re looking at essentially the volume of ore that we will process this year.
“There’s not much of a change but we are looking at a higher grade for this year, we’re looking at improvement in efficiencies in the processing plants,” Museva-Shayawabaya.
Freda, which is KMH’s flagship gold producer, Mr Maseva-Shayawabaya said, has been in existence since 1988, but the mine’s life span has never been longer than five years.
He said this was due to the lack of investment in exploration.
As a result, this is something that KMH is transforming through a US$5 million exploration programme expected to extend the life of the mine beyond five years using internally generated resources.
“Freda Rebecca has been operating since 1987 and if you go through the annual reports over the years, the life of mine has never been longer than five years, but here we are, 37 years down the line — Freda is still there.
“Essentially what has happened is; over the years, the company has not really invested much into exploration, something that we want to change and we have embarked on an exploration programme, which when complete, we are very confident that the life of mine will exceed the five years that it is currently at.”
Out of the US$5 million budgeted for the exploration programme over two years, about US$1 million was spent in the year ended March 31, 2024.
KMH is one of the State enterprises controlled by the Mutapa Investment Fund and operates a portfolio of mines organised into four clusters of minerals that also include Platinum Group Metals (PGMs), energy minerals (nickel and lithium), and the bulk commodities (iron, steel and chrome).
Meanwhile, the mining group has implemented a mine-to-market traceability software in compliance with international regulatory requirements for transparency and accountability in the mining industry.
In 2021, KMH adopted the mine-to-market traceability system that enables the tracking of minerals produced within the group from extraction right up to their marketing.
Since 2008, mineral conflict has been an issue globally with international market leaders denouncing the production and trading of such resources.
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