[ferro-alloys.com]

  Zimasco is working on its West plant in kwekwe, Zimbabwe, to restart the furnace to resume production.

  The plan was developed after the five-year lease agreement between Zimasco and portnex expired. Portnex and Zimasco signed a lease agreement in 2015, which operates the Western plant, which has three furnaces, the latter operates the eastern plant, which has two furnaces.

  Zimasco has been operating two furnaces in the eastern plant, and it will be shut down for seven months due to the epidemic in 2020, and then restart in October. Portnex, however, stopped operating Western factories in 2019 on the basis of "difficult operations" before the lease expired in december2020, resulting in legal disputes between the two companies. Currently, Zimasco is evaluating and maintaining the Western plant and preparing to resume production.

  MS Clara Sadomba, general manager of marketing and administration, confirmed the reopening plan. "What we can determine at this stage is that Zimasco intends to re operate the furnace of the Western plant as soon as possible and is currently under assessment," she said Once the West plant is put into operation again, it is expected to increase the production of the company by more than 1 times.

  At full speed, Zimasco has an average annual turnover of $200million and employs more than 2000 employees. Currently, the mining and smelting business employs about 700 workers directly, and the number of employees is expected to double if the West plant is reopened.

  Zimasco is a comprehensive ferrochromium producer of Sinosteel in Zimbabwe, which operates and mines chromium ore in shulugwi, lalapanzi and mutorashanga, fowl region of Guinea and near the tributaries of the great dike in Zimbabwe. The company's high carbon ferrochromium capacity in Kukui is about 180000 tons.

• [Editor:Catherine Ren]