Mimosa Mine Lays Off 33 Managers

The platinum miner, Mimosa Mining Company is retrenching 33 managers and supervisors and abandoning a key expansion project in response to falling global metal prices.

In a statement, the company said platinum prices fell by 35% since April last year, hitting its cash flows and profits. It said:

The outlook is that the prices will remain depressed in the medium term. In view of this, we have had to implement several measures to ensure that our business remains viable in the low-price metal environment.

This has resulted in a staff rationalisation exercise, which has affected 33 managerial and supervisory employees.

Mimosa also said it has offered severance to 34 employees while nine opted for early retirement. The company said:

No further rationalisation of the permanent staff complement is planned at this stage.

Mimosa, however, said people remain the most important part of the business and said its workers have been engaged about the whole issue.

According to newZWire, Mimosa previously said it planned to spend up to US$100 million to develop a new mining area, called North Hill.

The area has a resource of 1.5 million ounces of platinum and would replace the South Hill area, which is running out.

The company has had to abandon this plan, according to results released earlier by Sibanye Stillwater, the South African miner that co-owns Mimosa with Impala Platinum.

The commodity price crisis will deeply affect Zimbabwe, as this has led to a decrease in export earnings.

For instance, in the first nine months of 2023, export earnings fell from $4.5 billion to $3.6 billion compared to the same period the previous year.

More: Pindula News