Mining companies, including Sinosteel-owned Zimasco, have ceded chrome mining licences to Zimbabwe’s State-owned Apple Bridge Investments, which buys chrome ore for export, Mines Minister Walter Chidakwa said.
The mining licences, known as claims, have been allocated to small-scale miners who dig the mineral on Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke mountain range. Apple Bridge, formed by government in August with a $100-million loan, buys exclusively from those producers.
Small-scale miners in Zimbabwe, known as tributors, traditionally sell chrome ore to Zimasco and Zimbabwe Alloys, the two biggest chrome miners in the country, that, in turn, smelt the mineral into ferrochrome for export. A fall in prices led both Zimbabwe Alloys and Zimasco to cut smelting operations, leaving many tributors unpaid. Apple Bridge was formed by government to salvage the chrome mining operations.
“In the past two weeks, the selling price of chrome on the world market has improved tremendously and Apple Bridge has been doing well,” Chidakwa told lawmakers on December 7, adding that government’s relationship with foreign chrome miners is “working smoothly”.
Zimbabwe has the world’s second-largest deposits of chrome after neighbour South Africa.