Kuvimba goes it alone on Great Dyke mining project

STATE-OWNED Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) says it will not seek new foreign investment partners to develop the Great Dyke Investments (GDI) platinum project in Darwendale after Russia’s Vi Holdings exited the joint venture deal.

GDI, a member of KMH, is forging ahead with the development of the platinum project in Darwendale, Mashonaland West province despite its Russian investment partners having pulled out of the project citing the impact of the geo-political conflict in Eastern Europe.

Initially, the platinum project was being developed under a 50/50 joint venture partnership between Zimbabwe’s Landela Mining Venture (Pvt) Ltd and Russia’s Vi Holdings.

After Vi Holdings’ pull out, KMH which was established a few years ago to consolidate Zimbabwe’s development agenda by reviving ol and developing new mines or industrial operations considered of national strategic importance, now controls 100 percent equity in the Darwendale project through GDI.

Responding to questions from journalists before a tour of the Darwendale platinum project in Harare last Friday, KMH group technical director Engineer Munashe Shava, who is also GDI’s chief operating officer, said:

“I think you are all aware of the Russian and Ukraine issue, it brought in a new dimension to the project (GDI platinum operation) because the other joint venture partners (Vi Holdings) and obviously with what was happening (Russia/Ukraine conflict) had to pull out of the project.

“When you look at it, the approach now is to say let’s find our own resources to develop this project because it doesn’t make sense to bring in the Chinese, Americans or whoever has got money to come in and get into a project of this magnitude, and also come in and bring their new conditions.”

So far, the local mining group is mobilising over US$50 million needed to kick-start mining operations before the end of this year at the operation that is valued at over US$2,5 billion.

The mining concern has injected close to US$100 million into the Darwendale platinum project.

In the long-term, the GDI project that sits on a concession covering a total of an estimated 6 700 hectares requires US$500 million.

KMH is largely using internal resources to fund its acquisitions, but has also been supported by the Government through Treasury while local banks have also been pivotal in financing the firm’s operations.

The mining group either holds100 percent equity or is a major shareholder in entities such as the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange-listed Bindura Nickel Corporation (BNC), Globe and Phoenix, Freda Rebecca, Shamva, Jena, Sandawana, Tiger and Club, Elvington mines, and Zimbabwe Alloys (Zim Alloys).

In 2022, Kuvimba entered a management contract with the Government to revive the mothballed Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (Zisco), which is in Redcliff, near Kwekwe, signaling a step further in the right direction towards the long-awaited revival of once the largest integrated steelworks North of Limpopo.

Exploration and feasibility studies are complete at the new platinum mine owned by GDI and production is due to start soon with the operation expected to yield 1,36 million kilogrammes of the metal over 60 years.

The platinum operation will have a plant capacity of processing 3,5 million tonnes of ore per annum.

The scope of the work for mine development at the Darwendale project also involves primary mine accesses, the box cut and the declines.

At the mine site, two box cuts which are single rectangular holes providing secure and safe entrances to underground operations have been established with the company already underground ready to start producing ore.

The second box cut was 60 percent complete before operations were suspended when it was realised that the portal has an opencast resource that could be exploited for between six and seven years.

“So, instead of continuing doing that portal we should use that box cut as access to the open pit resource and we mine it for about six to seven years and that also generates early income for the project,” Eng Shava said.-herald