Great Dyke platinum project well on course

EXPLORATION and feasibility studies are complete at the new platinum mine owned by Great Dyke Investments in Darwendale and production is due to start soon with the mine expected to yield 1,36 million kg of the metal over 60 years.

Great Dyke Investments is a member of Kuvimba Mining House, a State-owned company established a few years ago to consolidate Zimbabwe's development agenda by reviving and developing mines or industrial operations considered of national strategic importance.

Kuvimba took over the mining development and the future mine after a Russian company pulled out citing conflict in Eastern Europe.

This is in sync with the Second Republic's national development agenda that is hinged on bolstering production in all economic sectors for the country to attain an upper middle-income economy by 2030.

Kuvimba, whose major shareholder is the Government with 65 percent equity, has vast interest in gold, nickel, lithium, chrome and platinum.

The mining group either holds 100 percent equity or is a major shareholder in entities such as the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange-listed Bindura Nickel Corporation, Globe and Phoenix, Freda Rebecca, Shamva, Jena, Sandawana, Tiger and Club, Elvington Mines, and Zimbabwe Alloys (Zim Alloys).

Last year, Kuvimba, which does not own the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (Zisco), signed a management contract with the defunct steel plant, signalling a step further in the right direction towards the long awaited revival of one of the larger integrated steelworks north of Limpopo.

Zisco ceased operations at the height of hyperinflation in 2008. Speaking before a tour of the Darwendale platinum project in Harare on Friday, Kuvimba group technical director Engineer Munashe Shava who is also GDI chief operating officer said exploration was fully done with the feasibility study also complete.

"In terms of ounces, the project has 44 million ounces of platinum group metal, 1,364 million kg, that's the four elements of platinum, palladium, gold and rhodium), so it's by no means a small project.

"And what we call the feed is from feasibility and when we go into detailed designs, the feed is front-end engineering designs.

"All that work was done and the product of that work is what gives you the construction drawings which you will then be using to construct various aspects of the project like houses, plants and the mines and all that was done," he said.

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

"In terms of the other infrastructure, you would find that all the accommodation to cater for people that we want to be on site was also developed as a guest lodge.

"A full feasibility study for the accommodation of the entire workforce at full peak was also done," said Eng Shava.

The workers' houses will be developed at an area called Pamunda near Norton and funding arrangements for the residential project have also been established with local building societies expected to fund the initiative because the strategy by GDI is to ensure its employees own the houses.

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 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.

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

In a separate briefing at the mine site, GDI chief geologist Mr Hillman Nyamagodo said: "The Darwendale project has a potential capacity of 44 million ounces of platinum and to date we have managed to explore a JORC (Joint Ore Reserve Committee) compliant resource of 17,1 million ounces.

"We have actually drilled about 130 000 metres from close to 805 drill holes. We have got a total of 181,3 million tonnes of ore which is JORC compliant ideally from the northern part only and this is supposed to grow when we drill the other portion at a grade of 2,93 4, holding all of platinum, palladium, gold and rhodium."

When mine operations expected to commence soon begin, they would do open pit mining on the second box-cut and this will dovetail into underground mining.

Initially, the Darwendale 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 before the foreign partners exited the deal due to geo-politics in Eastern Europe where Russia and Ukraine are in conflict.

After the exit of the Russian partners, Kuvimba now controls 100 percent shareholding. The local mining group is mobilising over US$50 million needed to kick-start mining operations at the platinum venture before the end of this year.

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. Kuvimba is largely using internal resources to fund its acquisitions and the Government has supported the entity by funding some of its operations while local banks have also been pivotal in financing the firm's operations.