“We reached financial closure on the project at the end of last month and secured $100 million,” Patrick Maseva-Shayawabaya, chief executive officer of sister company Mutapa Gold, told Bloomberg News in an interview from the capital, Harare.
“Civil works are now beginning,” he said, following a briefing on the platinum project on Monday.
This milestone comes as the company has been seeking mining partners to facilitate the development of its $500 million platinum mine since the year began.
Funding for the Darwendale project
In February, CEO of Mutapa Platinum Group, Munashe Shava, noted that the company had selected Darwendale, a town in the country’s Mashonaland West province, located approximately 62 km west of Harare, for its new platinum mining operations.
The region is said to boast around 44 million ounces of platinum-group metals.
“We have also done a collaborative approach for the development of the asset, where we are looking at other producers or other miners who are already in the game to try and see how to collaborate with them to fast-track the development,” Shava said at a press conference in the country’s capital, Harare, at the time.
The company had expected that there would be adherence to the projected timeline, which was slated to commence by the close of the first quarter of the year.
The CEO stated that the open-pit mine is projected to have a lifespan of seven to ten years, and Mutapa Platinum is currently estimating the project’s capital expenditure.
“We are open to anybody who has got the proper color of money to come into the project,” Shava said.
Later in May, the Mutapa Investment Fund, Zimbabwe’s sovereign wealth fund, which controls Mutapa Platinum Group, disclosed that it was sourcing $250 million to expand its gold mining activities.
According to Ernest Denhere, Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Mutapa, the fund, which holds ownership of Mutapa Gold Resources, had initiated discussions with domestic financial institutions.
The preliminary phase involves securing $75 million in local debt, serving as the initial step toward achieving the broader capital target.
Corporate leadership indicated that the capital raised will facilitate the expansion of its gold asset portfolio, which encompasses five mining concessions covering approximately 52,000 hectares within Zimbabwe.
Source: Africabusinessinsider