Chronicle Editor
Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
LIVETOUCH Investments has said plans are underway to invest US$50 million towards setting up a clinker plant to support its local cement manufacturing operations.
The Beijing-headquartered company is the parent firm of Diamond Cement which is based in Redcliff as well as a chrome processing business along the Great Dyke.
In an interview Livetouch general manager, Mr Kyle Wang, said at the moment his organisation was buying clinker from its competitor, PPC Zimbabwe.
“Right now we are in good relations with PPC Zimbabwe and we work closely with PPC as we buy our clinker from them.
“We are planning to co-operate with PPC for our clinker production line,” he said.
“We are in negotiations with them for a medium to long-term project of building a clinker plant.
We are looking at investing a couple of millions of up to US$50 million into the clinker project.”
Management is yet to decide where the plant would be located.
Livetouch Zimbabwe was established in 2013 and has invested US$30 million in its cement plant in Redcliff.
Mr Kyle said while his company has advanced technology, it wanted strategic partnerships with local investors like PPC Zimbabwe who have mineral deposits such as limestone where clinker, a major raw material in cement production was found.
The Redcliff-based cement plant has an installed capacity of 40 000 tonnes per month.
Due to the existing power shortages and raw material challenges prevailing in the country, Diamond Cement is producing between 8 000 and 10 000 tonnes of cement per month.
On the outlook, Mr Kyle expressed optimism that the prevailing economic climate in Zimbabwe would improve, a situation that will see the business improving its operational capacity.
“We have the capacity to produce almost 40 000 tonnes of cement per month but due to some raw material issue and the electricity issue in this country, now we can only produce 8 000 to 10 000 tonnes of cement per month.
“We think this can get better in future. We do have faith for this country and we foresee great potential for this country and we want to be part of development in this country,” he said.
Mr Kyle hailed the Second Republic for adopting the “Zimbabwe is open for business” mantra, which encourages investors from across the globe to come over and set their investments into the country.
With the revival of the Tripartite Negotiating Forum, he said the country’s economy would be much better than going forward.
Meanwhile, Livetouch Investments has also partnered the Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation in a project to build gold milling centres across all the regions that produce the yellow metal in the country.
“Already we have built one milling centre in Matabeleland South province with a minimum capacity to process 500 tonnes of ore per day, but we are looking at each milling centre processing 1 000 tonnes,” said Mr Wang. — @okazunga
Online Reporter