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Kaala Mpinga

MWANA Africa has engaged the National Railways of Zimbabwe in an effort to revive train deliveries to Bindura Nickel once the smelter has been refurbished.

The firm has successfully raised $20 million through a bond issue to finance the restarting of the mothballed smelter, which will increase capacity to 160,000 tonnes per annum and revenues by 15 to 20 percent.

Speaking at a press briefing, Mwana chief executive Kaala Mpinga said BNC has received inquiries from nickel producers in other countries who want to use the smelter once it becomes operational.

“Ever since we started the process of refurbishing the smelter, we have been approached by nickel producers as far away as Australia to find out whether we’ll be able to process some of their material.

“We have engaged in discussion with NRZ because indeed if we are going to be tolling material from around the world, we cannot do that if we’re paying $200 a tonne to move concentrate by truck from Durban or Beira to Harare,” he said.

He said a working party between NRZ and BNC has been set up to understand what the requirement in terms of wagons, locomotive and frequencies with a view to creating a unit train.

“We’re going to do a trial shipment of 1,000 tonnes in April. NRZ is giving up to take a unit train from Bindura all the way to Durban,” he said.

The company said the smelter historically used to toll treat material that came from countries all over world including Australia, North America and Botswana.

On beneficiation of locally produced platinum, Mpinga said modifications will be made on the BNC smelter so that it can treat platinum group metals, even if they might not necessarily come from Zimbabwe.

“We’ve a whole team that is dedicated to analysing concentrate specification that are coming from quite a number of countries and one of the things a lot of those concentrates have in common is a lot of PGM as by-products.

“So with or without the producers here I think it is in our plans to make sure we can maximise PGM recovery,” he added.

Pan-African financial institution Ecobank has underwritten nearly 40 percent of the $20 million BNC bond whose proceeds would finance the restart of the smelter.

BNC and Freda Rebecca mines are local units of Mwana Africa.

The long term debt instrument which opened on December 5 closed last Friday.

“There were 32 institutions that participated and Ecobank underwrote close to 40 percent of that particular bond,” Mpinga said.

The bond is structured as a secured fixed-rate coupon bond, redeemable in United States dollars. It carries a semi-annual coupon, payable in arrears over its five-year tenor. It was awarded Prescribed Asset Status by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Finance and Liquid Asset Status by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

Ecobank Zimbabwe managing director Daniel Sackey said the bank was hopeful that the economy would recover anchored on strong growth from the mining sector.

“Ecobank is delighted to be part of this transaction, which not only supports BNC in its quest for revenue growth and to significantly boost Zimbabwe’s capacity to promote value addition in the mining sector,” Sackey said.

“He said the transaction reaffirmed Ecobank’s commitment to support the development of companies operating in strategic sectors, thus bringing additional growth to African economies. — BH24.