Ministry to resuscitate Kwekwe gold plant

Ministry to resuscitate Kwekwe gold plant
Published: 17 April 2014
The government has assumed responsibility of resuscitating Kwekwe refractory gold roasting plant with a view to realise $140 million from extracting gold trapped in dumps at the plant, a senior government official has said.

The refractory plant stopped operating in 2000 and the government transferred ownership of the assets to Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe on condition that the corporation would pay all the liabilities that the roasting plant had.

MMCZ paid all the liabilities and assumed ownership of the assets on behalf of the government.
Government through Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, however, decided to take control of the resuscitation of the roasting plant to make sure it becomes functional immediately.

Mines and Mining Development Permanent Secretary Professor Francis Gudyanga told our Harare Bureau that plans are at an advanced stage to resuscitate the plant.

"Very soon we will be calling for expression of interest from all interested investors and partners that want to come on board. Systems at the plant are obsolete and need a complete overhaul.

"The roasting plant on its own is a rich mine and we hope that if the dumps at the plant are processed we might realise capital in the region of $140 million," said Professor Gudyanga.

The expression of interest will be to invite partners willing to inject capital towards resuscitation of the roasting plant.

The roasting plant was established in 1937 by the then government of Rhodesia to assist small and medium scale miners around Kwekwe in the processing of dumps or refractory gold ore.

In refractory ore, gold is locked up within the crystal lattice of sulphide minerals as very fine particles.
The only way to recover refractory gold is to break down the crystal structure of the sulphide mineral and the traditional method of doing this has been roasting.

These dumps have an estimated 350,000 metric tonnes of ore and according to Peacocke and Simpsons Mineral Processors, they contain 97,220 ounces of gold worth $140 million at current prices.

Professor Gudyanga said plant resuscitation is set increase volumes to the national gold output.
Government is going to replace roasters with new technology to improve recovery of gold and reduce the environmental impact of the plant.

"We want to find technology that can efficiently and effectively extract the refractory gold from the dumps. The treatment of this ore requires new technology because we want to migrate from the past roasting method.

"Government wants to establish a facility to treat the ore as it comes from other mines that have refractory gold because all is now under the jurisdiction of the ministry," he said.

Professor Gudyanga said the government is expecting groups and companies that have the financial and technological capacity to come as partners in order to exploit the resource.

While operational, the roasting plant was processing at least 10 percent of the national gold output and the gold was mainly coming from small and medium miners.
About 26 mines used to get services from the plant and after it shut down all the mines closed

The Kwekwe roasting plant has capacity to process about 9,000 to 10,000 tonnes of concentrate per annum.

Extensive reserves of the refractory gold exist in Zimbabwe, particularly in the Kwekwe, Kadoma and Gwanda greenstone belts. This roasting plant was set up to custom treat refractory gold floatation concentrates from the mines in Zimbabwe.

In 2001, an arrangement was established between Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre and MMCZ where both parties would joint venture in resuscitating the operations of the roasting plant.

MMCZ funded the installation of the technology and the running of the plant, but until 2006, no meaningful gold was produced by the new SIRDC Acid Technology at least to cover operating expenses.

This culminated in the termination of the agreement in December 2006.
- chronicle
Tags: Gold,

Comments

Latest News

Latest Published Reports

Latest jobs