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Ishemunyoro Chingwere

Business Reporter

Resource confirmation work ongoing at Bravura Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited’s platinum project in Mashonaland West province, is unearthing investment compelling data that is expected to give impetus to the mining venture, mine management has said.

Bravura Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited signed a platinum mining project with the Government of Zimbabwe last year at a function that was presided over by President Mnangagwa and is one of the examples of investors that has heeded the President’s call for investment.

Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando and his Deputy Polite Kambamura on Friday, toured Bravura’s mine site where they were briefed on the progress the venture has made.

Briefing the Minister and his delegation Bravura country director Lionel Mhlanga, said resource definition work is progressing well and the miner is experiencing mineralisation in all the holes that they have drilled.

Buoyed by a capital injection of US$1 billion from internal sources, the miner has so far done 15 holes totalling 5 000 metres and is hoping to have done 15 000 metres by year end before moving to the next stage of the mine development.

“We have immediately hit the ground . . . we have started work, we are doing exploration, we are finding the resource but we are still to quantify the resource so that we can take the project to the next stage,” said Mr Mhlanga.

“Our group has availed a billion US Dollars from in-house sources for the development of this project and we are very privileged that we are working here.

“We have been working non-stop, it’s a 24-hour operation and that goes to show the level of commitment we have.

“All this is also in line with your (Government’s) 2023 Vision of creating a US$12 billion mining industry.

“We are very confident that we will contribute our fair bit to the vision,” he said.

Minister Chitando said Government was impressed by the work that Bravura is doing and expressed confidence the project will be on time to feed into the 2023 mining sector US$12 billion milestone.

He said it was pleasing that the investor had noted high mineralisation in the area under the special grant to the extent that exploration is not meant to find the resource but just to confirm and quantify.

“I was talking with my colleague, the Deputy Minister (Kambamura), we are extremely impressed with what we are seeing and what we have heard,” said Minister Chitando.

“There is no doubt at this rate we will have the first platinum being produced in 2023 and contributing to the (US$12 billion) milestone.

“There is one word which I liked in the presentation by the team from Bravura, and it’s that they are undertaking conformational drilling, that’s very important.

“Some people might come and say this is exploration, which is probably to some extent technically correct, but what they are doing is resource confirmation to come up with a resource statement to enable the project to move to the next phase which is mine modelling and firming up on a roadmap for implementation,” he said.

Minister Chitando said instead of outsourcing for services as is the case with several mining houses across the world, the miner has bought its own equipment which includes the said drill rigs as well as a state of the art mine laboratory for its test works ,a sign that they were in it for the long haul.

Expectation is that in the first quarter of 2021 they the miner will get feedback in terms geological modelling, second quarter 2021 start mine design and third quarter move to mine construction.

The Bravura project is key to Government’s mining strategy as platinum is expected to contribute US$3 billion annually under the 2023 milestone.

This contribution is premised on new production from Bravura, Karo Resources, Great Dyke Investment as well as optimisation and expansion projects at already existing producers.