The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
ONE of the country’s leading mining equipment manufacturer and supplier, Small Scale Mining Supplies is working on manufacturing and supplying chrome wash plants to small-scale miners on loan.
A senior executive at the company Mr Laurence Cleminson said the company was working on coming up with a chrome wash plant compatible with the country’s small-scale chrome miners.
“We are busy working on a basic processing plant to see what we can come up with. It’s our plans to do that. It’s just a case of giving priorities and getting everything right. We have talked about it before,” he said.
The company is already supplying gold small-scale miners with mining plants which entail mining, processing and recovery units valued at $200 000 payable over a period of three years at zero deposit and also offers start-up capital.
Small Scale Supplies has already installed one such mining plant for a miner in Hope Fountain.
Small Scale Mining Supplies manager, mining division Mr Tension Hlatini said the company has received numerous inquiries from chrome small-scale miners seeking it to extend its mining equipment loan facility to the chrome sector.
“We intend to come up with a chrome wash plant the same way we are doing for gold miners. However, for the chrome miners, the plant will be for the washing of alluvial chrome which will see the washing away of soils and retaining of concentrate.
“We are introducing this scheme largely due to the fact that we realised that not all small-scale miners are involved in gold production. For instance in areas like Mutorashanga there is more chrome than gold and we also received overwhelming inquiries from chrome miners seeking our support,” said Mr Hlatini.
He said due to the bulk nature of the mineral, the company was most likely to consider to reduce the loan repayment period further stating that most small-scale miners are likely to consider taking up their wash plant.
“Due to the bulk nature of chrome and the money the miners will realise from that we are quite positive the miners will be able to remit the loan and as such we might consider giving them one year to repay.
“Our technical team has already done a field visit to one miner in Mutorashanga who tributes from Zimasco (Zimbabwe Mining and Smelting Company). We are going to have our pilot programme there but it has to be noted that before we install the plant we first of all carry out a geological assessment to see if the resource will be able to support the project,” said Mr Hlatini.
Most of Zimbabwe’s ferrochrome deposits lie in the Great Dyke, a mountain range that runs the length of the country.
It is in ferrochrome, platinum and gold deposits. Zimasco has mined ferrochrome on the Great Dyke since the early 1900s.
Zimbabwe is planning to export over 800 000 tonnes of chrome this year, following the Government’s move to re-distribute land previously held by miners.
This comes as the country earned $115 million from the sale of 140 000 tonnes of high carbon ferrochrome last year, while 284 943 tonnes of raw chrome were exported for $31 million.
