The ManicaPost
Abel Zhakata Senior Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Mining Company Private Limited has received heavy duty plant equipment procured from Belarus under a $32 million Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe financing facility granted last year.
The first batch of the equipment which comprises seven dump trucks arrived at Forbes Border Post in Mutare on Tuesday and were being cleared by Zimra officials en-route to the Chiadzwa diamond fields.
ZCDC will receive a total of 21 dump trucks and five dozers which it procured from the eastern European country. The company’s chief executive officer, Dr Moris Mpofu, said all the equipment will be in the country in three months’ time.
“This is part of the recapitalization process we are undertaking at ZCDC in order to increase our operations at the mines. We are going to receive 21 dump trucks and 5 dozers that were procured from Belarus using the $32 million we got from the RBZ last year,” he said and added:
“In the next three months we would have taken delivery of all the equipment. We have since set up an assembling platform at Chiadzwa where we are going to put the machinery components together since we are receiving them in pieces”.
Dr Mpofu said by procuring the machinery, ZCDC would sustain itself and do away with contract mining which is costly.
“When we have our own machinery we will do everything on our own. What it means is that we will declare more dividends to Government by minimizing costs related to contract mining. The new mining equipment will also help us expand our operations and thereby increase production. All portals in Chiadzwa and Chimanimani will have enough equipment to operate a t full capacity.
“We have started to engage the contract miners on the new developments. What is more important is that with the new equipment we will be able to do conglomerate mining which will increase our yield both qualitatively and quantitatively. It means that we will get more refined gems that fetch higher prices unlike the industrial diamonds which we being mined through alluvial processes,” he said.
