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Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
AFRICA Chrome Fields, a subsidiary of Fanshawe Mining Holdings, yesterday demonstrated to President Mugabe a ground breaking chrome smelting technology, the exothermic (alluninathemic) processing, that drastically reduces time taken to refine chrome from the traditional six hours to less than a minute.

Exothermic is a unique and new technology of smelting chrome concentrate into ultra-low carbon ferrochrome in less than 60 seconds which does not require electricity.

The demonstration was done at AFC Mine in Chinyika Range in ward two Chirumhanzu-Zibagwe constituency where it is going to set up a chrome mine and a smelting plant.

President Mugabe said the technology was exclusive to Zimbabwe and was the fastest chrome processing method in the world.

“When we first heard about this new technology by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, I thought maybe he just wanted me to come over to his former constituency. Today I’ve witnessed for myself this sophisticated technology that can smelt chrome in less than two minutes. I’m also informed that it’s the first of its kind. This technology is in this country alone and other countries will learn from us,” he said.

President Mugabe said there was a need for the country to properly utilise its mineral resources to ensure that people benefit from them.

“We’re told that the company will require 11 months to fully establish and start operating at full throttle,” he said.

Fanshawe Director, Zunaid Moti, who also designed the new technology, said his company had injected $200 million into the project.

“Normally, the chrome smelting process takes about six hours. Our technology requires only a minute to produce ultra-low carbon ferrochrome. Even the European countries that use advanced technology require about six hours to get this final product,” he said.

In a separate interview, ACF Chief Operations Officer, Fred van Rensburg said the company had 147 blocks of chrome claims which will feed into the plant which uses new technology.

Van Rensburg said the new technology would smelt chrome concentrate to produce ultra-low carbon ferrochrome in 45 seconds and has the capacity to produce 10,000 tonnes of ultra-low carbon ferrochrome a month.

“We’re setting up four chrome washing plants at the site that would convert chrome ore into chrome concentrate that would then be smelted into ultra-low carbon ferrochrome,” he said.

Van Rensburg said the company was still to start mining and would start constructing the smelting plant in two months time after finishing the paper work required for the whole project to kick-off.

“At the moment we’re just converting chrome ore into chrome concentrate storing it for smelting once we finish constructing the smelting plant.

“We aren’t mining for now but we hope to start soon. We’ve chrome ore which was left by the company which was operating here before, so we’re setting up washing plants so that we prepare the concentrate for smelting,” he said.

Van Rensburg said the chrome smelting plant will have four blast furnaces.

He said the company will employ about 600 people once it starts operating at full throttle.

“We’ve equipment and heavy machinery coming. We’ve already purchased it and it’s coming soon. We’re going to require over 600 employees.

“We’re looking forward to producing about 100 tonnes of chrome concentrate once we finish setting up the four washing plants. Our smelting plant will also have the capacity to smelt 20,000 tonnes a month,” he said.

Van Rensburg said the mining life span was about 50 years.

“We’re going to be extracting alluvial chrome. We’ve claims in Mashonaland, Guruve, Ngezi and Midlands,” he said.

The mine is located about 50km outside the city of Kwekwe. Ultra-low carbon ferrochrome costs $2.50 per pound.