Kuvimba targeting to produce over 3500 kg of gold this year

Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) is targeting to improve output by 8 percent this year to 3 500 kilogrammes underpinned by improvement in ore volumes and increased processing plant efficiencies.

KMH’s active mines under the gold cluster are Freda Rebecca, Shamva and Jena mines and these assets produced 3 240kg of the yellow metal this year according to the firm.

In an interview during a tour of the Bindura-based operation, KMH head of the gold cluster Patrick Maseva-Shayawabaya, who is also Freda Rebecca Gold Mine managing director noted: “For those three companies, we produced 3 240kg of gold for the year to March 2024. In terms of contribution to production, Freda contributed about 70 percent of the 3 240kg.

“This year, also for those three companies we are also looking at gold production to be at about 3 500kg split as follows 70 percent from Freda, Shamva 20 percent and Jena 10 percent.

“The increase in terms of production we’re looking at essentially the volume of ore that we will process this year. There’s not much of a change but we are looking at a higher grade for this year—we are looking at improvement in efficiencies in the processing plants.”

Freda, which is KMH’s flagship under the gold cluster, Maseva-Shayawabaya said, has been in existence since 1988 but the mine’s life span has never been longer than five years.

He said this was due to lack of investment in exploration.

As a result, this is something that KMH is transforming through a US$5 million exploration programme expected to extend the life of the mine beyond five years using internally generated resources.

“Freda Rebecca has been operating since 1987 and if you go through the annual reports over the years, the life of mine has never been longer than five years, but here we are, 37 years down the line — Freda is still there.

“Essentially what has happened is over the years, the company has not really invested much into exploration, something that we want to change and we have embarked on an exploration programme which when complete, we are very confident that the life of mine will exceed the five years that it is currently at.”

Out of the US$5 million budgeted for the exploration programme to span over two years, about US$1 million was spent in the year ended March 31, 2024.

KMH is one of the State enterprises and parastatals controlled by the Mutapa Investment Fund and operates a portfolio of mines organised into four clusters of minerals that also include Platinum Group Metals (PGMs), energy minerals (nickel and lithium), and the bulk commodities (iron, steel and chrome).-ebusinessweekly