Gold refinery in the cards

Dar es Salaam. The government, through the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, is looking for investors with whom it can get into a joint venture to establish a refinery for processing gold in the country.

Assistant Commissioner of minerals Ali Samaje told The Citizen yesterday that with no processing facility, Tanzania’s small, medium and large scale miners have to transport their minerals outside the country for value addition.

The available technology allows mining firms in the country to refine their gold by only up to 90 per cent. That being the case, Tanzania loses both jobs and revenues in the process.

“There are no refineries that can process up to 99.9 per cent of pure gold...as government, we are ready to enter into a joint venture with either individuals or companies to establish the plant to add value to the gold which will benefit the country more,” he said.

The Geita Gold Mine mineral processing engineer Webiro Mwesa said that the country lacks a refinery to process gold to 99.9 per cent pure gold and therefore the minerals are exported to South Africa where such a technological expertise is available.

“Our company is only able to process the gold into gold bars at 80 to 90 per cent, signaling that certain minerals – including metals such as silver - still do remain in the bars and this reduces the quality of our produce,” he said.

He said that Geita produced 527,000oz at a total cash cost of $480/oz for the year ended 31 December 2015, compared to 477,000oz at a total cash cost of $599/oz for the year ended 31 December 2014.