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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
MWANA Africa says it will shift focus to evaluating the possibility of restarting its mothballed Zimbabwe operations once it has completed the $26,5 million restart of Trojan Mine smelter. Executive chairman Mr Yat Hoi Ning said the group would consider restarting its Trojan Nickel Refinery, Hunters Road Project and the best option to take regarding Shangani Mine.

He said that in terms of Shangani Mine, under care and maintenance, the multi-commodity group would consider restoring production, closing the mine entirely or disposing of it. “Once the smelter is in operation our attention is likely to turn in two directions, feasibility of re-starting the Bindura Nickel refinery and the feasibility of restarting the Hunters Road project and financial options of such a development,” he said.

The smelter restart has progressed well with expressions of interest received from the region, including from as far afield as Australia to smelt concentrates. Mwana said this is encouraging, as the financial planning that has gone into Bindura Nickel’s bond issue was based solely on Trojan’s production.

The London Alternative Investment Market listed mining group last year successfully raised $20 million capital through a five-year bond to finance the re-start of its nickel mining subsidiary, Bindura Nickel Corporation’s Trojan Mine smelter. The bond drew strong support from domestic institutional investors and was the first in Zimbabwe to enjoy liquid-and prescribed asset status and was also accorded national project status.

The balance adding up to $26,5 million for the smelter restart would be raised from either debt finance or internal resources. Once the smelter has resumed operations it will have more than sufficient capacity to process Trojan Mine’s concentrates. This falls in line with Government’s thrust of beneficiation and value addition as espoused in the Zim-Asset.

Trojan will only be able to fill about two-thirds of the smelter’s capacity with its own concentrates. The remainder could be filled with toll-smelting of other miners’ material. The company believes that it would make sense, both for itself and for its host country, that the available excess capacity be used to process concentrates from third parties.

The London-listed junior miner’s chairman said this potential is still in the process of being investigated further by Mwana. Apart from improved prices of processed nickel concentrates, the smelter will significantly help reduce operating costs, which the company believes will go to the bottom line.