HARARE – London-listed Ariana Resources ARNR.L expects to start producing gold from its greenfield project in Zimbabwe in 2028, the company's managing director Kerim Sener said on Thursday.

Ariana's Dokwe project, about 110 km north-west of Zimbabwe's second-largest city Bulawayo, is the first large-scale greenfield project in the country in decades.

The southern African country has a long history of gold production, but has struggled to attract significant investment since international mining firms including Rio Tinto, Delta Gold and Kinross exited the country more than two decades ago amid a political and economic crisis.

A handful of mid-tier miners and a host of small-scale operators lifted Zimbabwe's annual gold production to 46.7 metric tons in 2025 from a low of 3 tons in 2008, mostly by reviving and expanding old mines.

The country's top miners include the foreign-listed Caledonia Mining Corporation and Namib Minerals, State-backed Mutapa Gold Resources and a unit of the locally owned Padenga.

With Dokwe's 1.13 million ounces of reserves, Ariana forecasts open pit mine output to peak at 100 000 ounces per year over a 20-year project lifespan, according to a prefeasibility study.

A definitive feasibility study is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2027.

"With a fair wind, I'd like to think that we're pouring our first gold in 2028," Sener told Reuters.

Ariana finds the Dokwe greenfield deposit's qualities compelling, he said, bucking the established trend of acquiring brownfield assets.

"Dokwe represented an opportunity to tackle what is the largest undeveloped gold deposit in Zimbabwe at the present time," Sener said.

"The other thing is the metallurgy. It looks to be fairly straightforward, a large part of the gold is amenable to gravity recovery," he added.

Sener said there was an ongoing shift in foreign investor sentiment towards Zimbabwe under the administration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from long-time leader Robert Mugabe after a 2017 coup.