Sixteen years after it shut down its furnaces, one of Zimbabwe’s biggest ferrochrome producers, ZimAlloys, is finally back in production.
The Gweru company has fired up the first of its three furnaces for the first time in years. Now, it is investing US$45 million to restart two other furnaces and reach annual annual ferrochrome output of 120,000 tonnes.
“We have resuscitated the first smelter and we are not stopping there,” says Zimalloys MD Deric Dube. “We plan to set up two more furnaces. We do have the resources to support that and we desire to see a return of ZimAlloys to the overall growth and development of ferrochrome production in Zimbabwe.”
ZimAlloys, once owned by Anglo American, was once one of the largest ferrochrome producers. In 2005, it was bought by Benscore, a consortium led by businessmen Farai Rwodzi and Adam Molai. However, production was stopped in 2008, as debts mounted after a commodity price crash. ZimAllows was put under judicial management in 2013. A US$90 million takeover bid of the operation by Indian firm Balasore, a company tied to the Mittal family, failed in 2018. Kuvimba then took over after ZimAlloys came out of judicial management in 2021.
ZimAlloys’ return comes after a tough period of capital raising, Dube says. The company raised an initial US$2 million to get the first furnace going, and will spend more on the mining side of the business to secure raw material to feed the furnaces.
“This means a lot to us, and to me personally, as I’ve had the privilege of being MD during the transition from no smelting to producing raw alloy. We’ve undergone two rounds of fundraising that have brought these projects to life. As you can imagine, raising capital is tough when you don’t have much money,” says Dube
ZimAlloys has around 20,000 hectares of chrome claims, but many of them have not been extensively explored. The company is estimated to have a resource of 73 million tonnes of alluvial ferrochrome potential.
“We have a good resource which we intend to use to feed into three of our smelters. We have resuscitated three chrome concentrator plants. This has almost doubled what we had in the same past month. This is all in light of reviving and restoring the business to what it used to be,” Dube says.
ZimAlloys currently produces 8,000 tonnes of chrome concentrates, but plans to smelt other alloys. Ferrochrome producers in Zimbabwe already consume up to 300MW, at a time the country is short of electricity. To secure power, ZimAlloys plans to install solar and wind power, Dube says.
Kuvimba, housed under the Mutapa sovereign wealth fund, holds 85% of ZimAllows. The remainder is owned by private investor and ferrochrome marketer Co-Metal. – (NewZWire)
