Zambian firm to build Sh1bn gold refinery on Mombasa Road
Women prospecting for gold in Kakamega County. Zambia's Alinani Precious Metals has announced plans to build a Sh1 billion gold refinery on Mombasa Road in Nairobi which will offer such miners the means to extract value from their mineral wealth.
Zambia's Alinani Precious Metals (APM) has announced plans to build a Sh1 billion gold processing plant on Mombasa Road in Nairobi at a cost of Sh1 billion targeting artisanal miners.
APM Chief Executive Bupe Chipando said the gold refinery project, whose construction starts early September, will offer miners the means to extract value from their own mineral wealth rather than just exporting raw commodities.
"Alinani Precious Metals will have the ability to generate and distil about 300 kilogrammes of gold per day with state-of-the-art equipment and machinery," Mr Chipando in a statement.
Small-scale or artisanal mining is popular in Siaya, Migori, Kisumu, Kakamega and Homa Bay counties and the APM refinery plant will target the processing metal produced by informal diggers in several counties in Kenya.
Technical support
“We will train, finance and provide machinery as well as continuous technical support to our members. The small miners in areas like Migori, Homa Bay, Siaya, Kisumu and Kakamega will be our priority,” he said.
APM is a mining corporation under First Group of Companies in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, with First Line Capital as an investment company, First Commodity Exchange works as a market platform, while First Cargo Logistics provides transportation of products under one umbrella.
Kenyan Mineral Rights Board Chairman Stephen Kuria said earlier that Kenya's untapped mineral sector has the potential of earning the country Sh719.4 billion or 12 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) from the minerals sector.
The sector currently contributes less than one per cent of the GDP.
Mineral deposits
An aerial survey to map Kenya’s mineral deposits, tipped to act as a catalyst for foreign investment, was to be complete in June.
Petroleum and Mining Principal Secretary Andrew Kamau said data from the survey would make it easier to attract investors to a sector that has been neglected by successive governments.
According to the 2019 Economic Survey, total earnings from mineral production declined 5.5 per cent in 2019 to Sh29.1 billion from Sh30.8 billion in 2018.
Most of Kenya’s mines remain small-scale projects, and mineral smuggling, especially in gold, abetted by foreign merchants, is on the rise.
