Chronicle EditorJudith Phiri,Business Reporter
SANCTIONS imposed on the country by America and her allies are affecting the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), as it is failing to source outside investment, with US$400 000 needed for a Carbon-in-pulp (CIP) plant at Bubi Milling Centre in Matabeleland North Province.
ZMDC owns 60 percent of the gold services centre in Matabeleland North, with small scale miners owning the remainder.
During a recent tour of the Bubi Milling Centre by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development, ZMDC non-executive director Mr Peter Chimboza said they were failing to raise capital to increase milling volumes due to sanctions.
“We operationalised this operation (Bubi Milling Centre) towards the end of 2018. We have faced a number of operational challenges but, however, we have been working on those challenges.
“Some of those challenges are getting some investors to put in money into the operation. Yes, some have come forward but at the end of the day a lot of them do talk about sanctions, that they cannot put the money in there because ZMDC is under sanctions which is a challenge,” said Mr Chimboza.
He said the other issue was that they needed to capacitate the small-scale miners, hence they were working on making sure that they get the relevant mining equipment and tools for the miners to supply adequate tonnage to the operation.
Mr Chimboza said they were partially equipped and in need of compressors, accessories, jack hammers and explosives.
“We have this equipment and accessories so as to capacitate the miners as some of their operations are under the ground, we now need to make sure that we have the relevant ways to assist them so that they can bring out more ore to the operation,” he said.
He said as a company the idea was to make sure that every ore from small scale miners in the area was delivered to them, hence they were providing transport to ferry the ore from the mines to the centre.
“We provide transport for the miners but we also need adequate transport to make sure everything that is produced does not go to our competitors but comes here at our operation at Bubi Milling Centre.
“Day in day out we still have to improve our relationship with the suppliers but generally I think the relationship is good and they also want us to do better and they want to do better as well,” he said.
Mr Chimboza said they were working on upgrading their equipment and making it relevant to small scale miners, as they work together to get maximum gold tonnage so that they could positively contribute to the US$12 billion target in the mining industry.
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development chairman, Edmond Mkaratigwa asked the Bubi Gold Milling Centre to write a proposal on what was needed to finish the project so that it may be presented to Parliament.
He said support for the milling centre could be of huge significance to the US$12 billion mining target by 2030.
“We have been informed that the CIP plant which will be able to handle more than 100 tonnes a day is envisaged but it needs a budget of more than US$400 000 to ensure the procurement, installation, commissioning and handover of the plant. So that they can then be able to produce a sizeable amount of gold.”
He, however, noted that a lot needed to be done as the miners raised a number of challenges.
“We were told that miners had recommended a certain design for the equipment but it’s not what was procured. We have seen some of the installed crushers being decommissioned because of some technical challenges,” he said.
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