One of the leading mining companies, Bravura says that Zimbabwe is a safe place to operate in adding that they are confident of remaining profitable despite metal prices softening on global markets.
Addressing the media in the capital recently, Bravura Group general manager eGbenga Ojo said the company has a strategy to mitigate operational risks.
“As a business, we have a strategy to manage our costs and one of the strategies that we have is that we are vertically integrated and for us, being vertically integrated, we have been able to mitigate against things like contractors and their subcontractors performance risk.
“A good example is during the COVID-19 period, most companies went into a crisis because they had arrangements with contractors in terms of their projects.
“But in our own case, all processes are in-house, and so we do not find ourselves in any contractual challenge. The skills, the engineers are in-house, the mining engineers are in-house, the rock engineers are in-house, and the geophysicists are in-house. So, we don’t have any plan to do contract mining.”
He said like what other companies are doing, Bravura has no plans for retrenchment and will remain a profitable organisation.
“Let us assume that we stay in the current situation of softening of prices, given our strategy we will still remain a profitable organisation.
“That can be proven by the fact that while everybody is retrenching, we have not retrenched anybody yet. And we don’t have to retrench anybody because we are in a safe way to operate.
“We are not into contract mining and we do things ourselves, and these are things we have put in place to mitigate finding ourselves in operational challenges,” he added.
Bravura group Head of Public Sector and Corporate Services Ms Shuvai Mugadza said the company is expecting its lithium project in Kamativi, Matabeleland North Province, to commence production in 2025.
“Everything we are doing right now is life of a mine, so we are actually living the life. When it comes to financial benefit, the first low hanging fruit is Kamativi. As soon as the plant comes, it’s going to take about six to seven months for installation. The engineers and technicians are ready.
“Optimistically we can say by around this time next year, we should have turned on the key for Kamativi ,” she said.
Bravura Holdings a firm owned by Nigerian business man Benedict Peters is currently running three projects in Zimbabwe namely Bravura Platinum, Bravura Lithium and Bravura Iron and all the projects are at different levels of completion.
