Kuvimba in historic 300kg gold haul
Kuvimba Mining House’s gold mining asset, Freda Rebecca Mine, has broken a 20-year production record after it churned out 300kg of the yellow metal in May this year alone, it has been learnt.
This is the second time in the history of the firm that such a milestone has been scored as Government ramps up efforts to achieve a US$12 billion mining economy by 2023.
The achievement means Kuvimba, where Government has majority holding, has managed to double the output at Freda Rebecca within a space of a year, making the mine the biggest in the country in terms of gold production.
When the mining giant took over last year, Freda Rebecca was producing 150 kgs of gold per month and officials say they are targeting to produce more than 300kgs per month in the next three years.
Freda Rebecca Mine general manager, Mr Eliakem Hove, attributed the stellar performance to massive re-investment done by Kuvimba at the mine.
“We had a good performance where we recorded around 300kg against a plan of 244kg in one month,” he said.
“Compared to last year after taking over, we were averaging 226kg per month. The success story is a combination of factors. Basically the key issue is re-investment in the business by our shareholder, which enabled us to recapitalise as well as have sufficient working capital. Combined with that is also team work from the employees, management and supervision. It’s a team effort that resulted in the numbers.”
Mr Hove said the next five years should see Freda Rebecca producing 300kg every month.
Kuvimba Mining House chief operating officer, Mr Cobus Bronn, weighed in: “KHM recognises and understands the importance of providing the required sustaining capital to the mine to ensure sustainable and improved production at the lowest possible operating costs. Freda Rebecca Gold Mine has a remaining life of mine of approximately five years and the company is actively looking to augment the current life of mine by evaluating near resources and secondly undertaking an extensive exploration plan to find and build the next mega mine to replace Freda Rebecca Mine.”
Apart from Freda Rebecca, Kuvimba has two other gold mining assets — Shamva, and Jena Gold Mine — which are on target to produce 400kg and 75kg by December 2022 per month respectively.
Currently, Shamva is producing 40 000 tonnes of gold ore per month while Jena’s output stands at 28kg of gold.
Kuvimba also has a stake in the Darwendale Platinum Project (Great Dyke Investments), Trojan Nickel Mine (Bindura Nickel Corporation), as well as in Zim Alloys Limited.
As part of its expansion drive, Kuvimba has been investing heavily in key machinery and assets at its mines.
At BNC, Kuvimba has finished the shaft deepening process, which allows the firm to extend mine life by seven years.
Zim Alloys is now out of judicial management with all creditors having been paid and production is expected to start before September.
“The company has made significant progress and commodity pricing has been overall positive. The company will continue to require significant capital to achieve its growth strategy,” said Mr Bronn.
Sources said Kuvimba will be declaring a dividend before the end of this month after posting positive results during the last financial year, which ended on March 31.
Its current turnover is about US$25 million a month being boosted by international gold prices and nickel prices, a development which has seen the company contributing more than US$10 million to the Reserve Bank’s foreign currency auction system.-heraald.cl.z
