One of Zimbabwe’s largest ferrochrome producers, ZimAlloys, located in Gweru, has resumed production after years of inactivity.
The company recently reignited the first of its three furnaces for the first time since shutting down in 2013.
Managing Director Deric Dube told newZWire that ZimAlloys is investing US$45 million to restart the remaining two furnaces, to achieve an annual ferrochrome output of 120,000 tonnes. Said Dube:
We have resuscitated the first smelter and we are not stopping there. 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.
Dube explained that ZimAlloys’ return to production follows a challenging period of capital raising.
The company successfully secured an initial US$2 million to restart the first furnace and plans to invest further in the mining sector to ensure a steady supply of raw materials for its operations. Said Dube:
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.
ZimAlloys holds approximately 20,000 hectares of chrome claims, though many of these areas have not been thoroughly explored.
The company estimates that it has a resource potential of 73 million tonnes of alluvial ferrochrome. Said Dube:
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.
ZimAlloys currently produces 8,000 tonnes of chrome concentrates and has plans to expand into smelting other alloys.
Dube said that the company intends to install solar and wind power systems, as ferrochrome producers in Zimbabwe consume up to 300MW of electricity.
Once owned by Anglo American, ZimAlloys was one of the largest ferrochrome producers in Zimbabwe.
In 2005, it was acquired by Benscore, a consortium led by businessmen Farai Rwodzi and Adam Molai.
However, production ceased in 2008 due to mounting debts following a commodity price crash, leading to the company being placed under judicial management in 2013.
In 2018, a US$90 million takeover bid by Indian firm Balasore, linked to the Mittal family, was unsuccessful.
Following its exit from judicial management in 2021, ZimAlloys was taken over by Kuvimba, which operates under the Mutapa Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Kuvimba now holds an 85% stake in ZimAlloys, with the remaining shares owned by a private investor and ferrochrome marketer Co-Metal.
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