Chinese-built steel plant in Zimbabwe fires up its furnace as it ‘builds the nation’

There are high hopes that the Mvuma steel plant in Zimbabwe, built by Chinese steel giant Tsingshan, will turn the country’s fortunes around

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Production has begun at the Mvuma steel and iron plant in Zimbabwe, as the country pins its economic hopes on the rebuilding of the industry. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:30pm, 22 Jun 2024

A new US$1.5 billion Chinese-built iron and steel plant in Zimbabwe has fired up its blast furnace as it begins production of pig iron, a major raw material needed to make steel.

There are high hopes that the Mvuma steel plant could see Zimbabwe become one of Africa’s largest producers of iron and steel products.

“Today marks a monumental milestone as our cast iron machine produces its very first batch of pig iron,” Dinson Iron and Steel Company (Disco), the Zimbabwean subsidiary of Chinese steel giant Tsingshan Holding Group, said on June 13

Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is produced by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. From July, the Chinese firm also aims to start making steel billets, an intermediate form of steel. Eventually it will make other products, too, such as pipes, bolts and nuts, smaller slags, rolled tubes, fences, shafts, wires and bars.

The plant will initially produce 600,000 tonnes of steel a year at the peak of its first phase and production is expected to reach five million tonnes in the final phase of the plant expansion. It will have up to 3,000 workers during the first phase of production with the number expected to double in the second phase.

When running at full throttle, the processing plant around 200km (120 miles) south of the capital Harare is touted to become Africa’s biggest integrated steelworks. And it could not come soon enough.