The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Makichi
Anglo American Platinum’s Unki Mine will commission a US$62 million smelter in August 2018 as the miner undertakes beneficiation of the metal locally.
This follows a decision by Government to impose a 15 percent levy on all raw platinum exports.
The tax was supposed to come into effect in January 2015 but was pushed to 2018 to give mining houses time to set up beneficiation facilities in line with President Mugabe’s position on local beneficiation.
Opening of a smelter by Unki, Zimbabwe’s second largest platinum producer, will see the company partially processing ore in the country before sending it to South Africa for refining.
Zimbabwe is losing out on between 10 and 14 other base minerals that are produced during the platinum refining process as ore is moved to South Africa.
The country’s three platinum miners are Zimplats, Unki and Mimosa.
Secretary for Mines and Mining Development Mr Munesushe Munodawafa said of Unki’s plans: “Unki, which is the second largest producer of platinum, is doing a good thing and they are in the process of setting up a smelter as part of its plans to adhere with the beneficiation thrust of the Government of Zimbabwe. Unki will commission its smelter on August 18, 2017.”
Zimbabwe has the world’s third largest platinum reserves after South Africa and Russia, and has put pressure on mining companies to smelt ore locally – something that has met both open and underground resistance by some miners.
If the companies comply, thousands of jobs will be created while millions of dollars in foreign currency will be earned through the export of other base metals.
Mr Munodawafa said the country’s three platinum group metals producers had submitted their formal written programmes on plans towards beneficiation.
He said Zimplats was already smelting and was is now on the next stage, which is separating various minerals within platinum.
Mimosa’s parent company, Impala Platinum, has been reluctant to set up a smelter. Impala Platinum said it would be forced to shut down Mimosa Mine if Government went ahead with plans to implement the 15 percent levy on raw platinum exports.
However, the platinum miner has now agreed to play ball and will convene a board meeting in November to map the way forward.
“We have three mining companies doing PGMs and all of them have now submitted formal written and firm programmes on their plans towards beneficiation. Zimplats is already smelting but they are now on the next stage, which is to separate the various minerals that are there.
“The third player, which is the smallest (Mimosa), seems to be having a bit of a problem there. They are going to have a board meeting sometime in November where they will decide when to put up that smelter.
“This comes on the backdrop of a proposed 15 percent tax effective January 01, 2018. We have made proposal to Treasury to deal with the issue so that we encourage beneficiation and value addition,” Mr Munodawafa said.
Platinum is required in many industrial applications.
It is estimated that one-fifth of everything people use in their daily lives either contains platinum or requires platinum in its manufacturing.
Most of the annual production is consumed by catalytic converters and fine jewellery. Together, these two applications consume more than 70 percent of the world’s supply of platinum.
