adminZimbabwe Mining Development Corporation plans to start metal production with Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation and a Chinese company on concessions taken from Anglo American Platinum Ltd and Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd.
The venture with ENRC, controlled by businessmen from Kazakhstan, is due to start producing platinum in the first quarter of next year. An exploration report from an alliance with the Chinese company, previously identified as Norinco International Corporation Ltd, is due by year-end.
“Everything is on course for the venture with ENRC to start production by April,’’ said Mr Jerry Ndlovu, managing director of ZMDC, said in an interview yesterday. ENRC declined to comment when contacted yesterday.
Zimbabwe, which has the world’s biggest resources of platinum after South Africa, is trying to expand its mining industry to help the country recover from a decade of economic contraction between 2000 and 2009. The country will produce about 365 000 ounces of platinum as well as metals found in the ore alongside the metal this year from mines owned by Anglo American Platinum, Impala and Aquarius Platinum Ltd, according to the country’s Chamber of Mines, an industry body.
Those companies, the rest of whose assets are in South Africa, are the only producers of the metal in Zimbabwe. Mining companies operating in Zimbabwe are compelled by the indigenisation law to cede control or sell of 51 percent their assets to locals.
ENRC holds 60 percent of Todal Mining Ltd, which owns a 4 500-hectare concession near Shurugwi, 233km southwest of Harare, according to its last annual report. ZMDC owns the rest.
ENRC acquired the interest when it took over Central African Mining & Exploration Company, known as Camec. Camec paid US$120 million in cash and shares to Zimbabwe for the stake in 2008 and agreed to lend the Government a further US$100 million, it said in a statement at the time. The concessions were formerly held by Johannesburg-based Anglo American Platinum.
In 2008 Camec said a mine on the Bougai and Kironde concessions would be built at a cost of US$200 million within 18 months and would produce as much as 150 000 ounces of platinum annually.
ZMDC also has an equally owned venture, Global Platinum, with a Chinese company, Mr Ndlovu said, declining to give the identity of the company.
The venture will operate as Shin-Zim Ltd, he said. In 2006 the ZMDC said it formed Global Platinum with Norinco, a state-owned Chinese engineering company, on concessions taken from Impala.
“We have spent US$40 million on exploration for that project,” he said. Global’s concessions are in Selous, 69km southwest of Harare.
“We are still at the exploration stage,” Mr Richman Ncube, a spokesman for Global, said in an interview. Results are “favourable, these things take time”. —Bloomberg.
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