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Zimasco, Zimbabwe’s biggest ferrochrome producer, is mulling rebuilding one of its old furnaces to increase ore production when prices improve on global markets, a senior company official said.
The company would not say how much the refurbishments of the furnace will cost, but said it will increase annual ore requirement by 150 000 tonnes.
Zimasco’s existing five 17-megawatt submerged electric arc furnaces have an annual production capacity of 180 000 tonnes ferrochrome with an ore requirement capacity of 519 000 tonnes per annum.
Addressing parliamentarians attending a seminar last week on the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-economic Transformation, Government’s new economic plan, services director Mr Roger Williams said the company is considering refurbishing some of its existing infrastructure to increase production.
“Furnace two of the five is to be rebuilt as a 30MVA submerged arc furnace and it is going to produce 53 000 tonnes of ferrochrome per annum.
“The project was suspended in 2012 due to ferrochrome market prices fall and it will only be restarted once the market improves,” said Mr Williams. “The existing furnaces were designed for ‘lumpy’ ore.”
He said with diminishing hard lumpy ore, new technology has to be introduced to enable existing furnaces to take sintered pellets.
The mining company requires capital to produce sintered pellets and the technology required is found in South Africa at a cost of $70 million. The company has since adopted cheaper Chinese technologies to avert the challenges.
Zimasco entered into partnership deals with two Chinese firms (Jilin Houyuan and Golden Horizon Limited) to set up the new technology furnace to increase production at its Kwekwe plant.
Since the global financial crisis of 2008 and introduction of multi currencies in Zimbabwe, Ferrochrome producers have been struggling to raise capital to purchase new technology.
“A Chinese company has built a plant to reprocess the around 80 000 tonnes of fine particles of ferrochrome trapped in the slag and Zimasco is paying the company for reprocessing the slag dump to obtain alloy and increase its effective production,” Mr Williams said.
Further, he said “another Chinese company is installing a sinter plant to process fine chromite ores into lumps which can be fed into the furnaces.
Mr Williams said the company needs to develop cost effective mining methods for the narrow seams characteristic of the Great Dyke for it to be competitive globally.
He said ferrochrome players have urged Government to work out a mechanism for exporters to benefit from the monies taken by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in 2007 to alleviate the prevailing tight liquidity adversely impacting their operations.
Last month Zimasco general manager Ms Clara Sadomba said the company is willing to invest more once its operations are established.
Zimbabwe and South Africa hold about 90 percent of the world’s chromite reserves and resources, according to a US Geological Survey.
Online Reporter