By George Maponga Masvingo Bureau<\/p>\n
Masvingo City\u2019s sole heavy industry firm, Sponge Iron Mining and Beneficiation Industries (SIMBI), has revealed plans to start producing nearly 20MW of electricity at its sponge-iron manufacturing plant once council guarantees sufficient water supplies.
\nSIMBI, a subsidiary of Kwekwe-based Steelmakers, produces sponge iron for local consumption and export at its Masvingo plant.
\nSIMBI operations are currently being hampered by shortage of water and recurrent power cuts, forcing the firm to operate at 75 percent capacity.
\nSpeaking during a tour of senior Government officials led by Masvingo Provincial Affairs Minister Cde Ezra Chadzamira, SIMBI general manager Mr Anand Rao said the sponge iron plant could generate power for its own use and also feed into the national grid.
\n\u2018\u2019We are facing a severe challenge of water, the water that we are getting is not enough because we need lots of water for cooling during the manufacture of sponge iron,\u2019\u2019 he said.
\n\u2018\u2019If we can get enough water we can guarantee that we will be able to generate up to 20MW of electricity which is enough to feed the whole of Masvingo. We will generate power for our own plant and feed the excess power into the national grid.\u2019\u2019
\nMr Rao said his firm had previously engaged Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) and Masvingo City to find ways of improving water supplies to no avail.
\nHe said Government should move in and ensure SIMBI has enough water supplies, saying capacitating the firm to generate power will reduce Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority\u2019s power import bill.
\nIn response, Minister Chadzamira said Government was prepared to assist SIMBI to generate the electricity.
\n\u2018\u2019We will surely look at how best we can help them because they have indicated that they are able to produce up to 20MW of electricity if they get sufficient water supplies and that power will light up the whole of Masvingo Province, so I think that is good news and we will closely look into that,\u2019\u2019 he said.
\nCde Chadzamira said Government welcome firms such as SIMBI that were keen to increase production, while in the process creating employment.
\n\u2018\u2019As Government, we are happy that SIMBI is even prepared to start generating electricity at its sponge iron plant which runs non-stop which means as Masvingo we will be guaranteed of power supplies, particularly now when the country is not producing enough power,\u2019\u2019 he said.
\nSIMBI produces 75 tonnes of sponge daily out of full capacity of 100 tonnes with water and power shortages cited as causing failure to achieve optimum production.
\nMasvingo has a number of outstanding power generation projects which if rolled out will greatly ease power shortages.
\nTop among them is the planned mini-hydro power plant at 15MW Tugwi-Mukosi Dam in Chivi.
\nThe US$20 million power project is being done by Tokwe-Mukosi Pvt Ltd which has since been issued with a power generation licence by the Zimbabwe Electricity Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t\tNulla porttitor accumsan tincidunt. Donec sollicitudin molestie malesuada. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus suscipit tortor eget felis porttitor volutpat.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-trends"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/StockSnap_RVIIXYBEEY.jpg?fit=1500%2C1000&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.zanupfpatriots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}