MOSES MATENGA
The Kuvimba Mining House-owned Great Dyke Investments has shut the door on foreign investors saying they are content with mobilising internal resources to kick-start the US$2.5bn project in Darwendale, Mashonaland West province.
Speaking during a media tour, Great Dyke Investments technical director Munashe Shava said giving away the investment to foreign investors was tantamount to giving away value on a project with so much work done already.
The project which is sitting on 40m tonnes and has a life expectancy of 50 years is set to take off by year end after Kuvimba Mining House poured in millions of dollars in investment following the pulling out of Russia’s Vi Holdings from the platinum project last year.
“All the matrix of a mining project which can be defined as a good project are present in Great Dyke Investments (GDI),” Shava said. “The current strategy is to develop the project in-house so we are mobilising resources within the group and within the country to be able to deploy. At the moment we are not looking for any external investors to come in. We see that as just giving value away for a project that has so much work done on it.”
“Exploration was done, feasibility study was done, the designs were done, execution commenced as indicated, tunnels already underground so in terms of timelines, this is imminent because what we are looking at is to mobilise more resources,” Shava added.
“The project has got about 44 million ounces of PGMs (Platinum Group Metals), so it’s by no means a small project, it’s quite a big project so the exploration is complete, the feasibility studies were completed, the execution was done, which is the development of the primary mine access, including the box and declines,” he said.
“When you look at it, the approach now is to say ‘let’s find our own resources to develop this project because it doesn’t make sense to bring in Chinese, Americans or whoever who has got money to come in and get into a project of this magnitude and also come in and bring in their new conditions,’” the project leader said.
“So, that’s the thinking. At the moment, we are not looking at any foreign investors. We want to organically develop the project.”
