Chinese company Afrochine plans to build a power station that will generate up to 1 000 MW to bridge the power deficit affecting the operations of its chrome smelting plant in Sealous, about 50 km from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.

Afrochine, a subsidiary of Tshingshan Iron & Steel, has completed Phase 1 of the chrome smelting project and is ready to invest up to US$100-million in the Phase 2 expansionary project.

Tsingshan Iron & Steel’s Xiang Guangda told local media that, because the company had plans for a large-scale expansion project that would require uninterrupted power supplies, it had sought permission to set up a power station to alleviate the chronic power shortages currently affecting production at the smelting plant.

“Afrochine is going to set up an electricity generating plant with the capacity to generate 600 MW to 1 000 MW.”

Steel Plant

“This goes in tandem with our plans to set up a steel plant, which will require a lot of power, which Zimbabwe does not have the capacity to produce at the moment.”

According to early estimates, the smelting and power generation projects are expected to create more than 10 000 jobs. Deputy permanent secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet Christian Katsande said the Zimbabwe government welcomed Chinese investment in the main economic sectors.

Driving Sectors

“The investment by Chinese companies in the driving sectors of the economy is greatly welcome, considering the amount of money that they are willing to invest,” he says.

Afrochine has set aside US$100-million for the construction of four 25 MVA smelters to boost its production capacity. If the power generation project is approved, the company will join more than 20 independent producers who have been licensed by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority to operate private power stations.

However, only six have started operations, owing to the ongoing economic crisis, characterised by a grinding liquidity crunch, bureaucratic business registration procedures and high operating costs.