"Zimbabwe’s scrap metal rush creates a circular economy, and headaches for authorities", 11 January 2022

In the city of Bulawayo, a struggling steel industry has in the past few years found relief in small-scale producers. These producers have contributed to a rush for scrap metal that has brought problems of its own, including a spike in vandalism and metal theft.

Steel manufacturing companies once thrived in Zimbabwe’s second city, which used to be celebrated as the nation’s industrial hub. But over the past decade, hundreds of companies have shut down in Bulawayo, citing high energy costs and water shortages, reducing the city’s once billowing furnaces to a silent wasteland of derelict structures. Pledges by the government to resuscitate industry have done little to help. [...]

Local industry leaders have also complained about the government issuing permits to companies that allow them to export scrap metal to neighbouring countries, and circumvent an official but loosely enforced ban. Illegal exports by unlicensed dealers also present a significant problem. These leakages, sanctioned or otherwise, deprive the domestic industry of much needed materials, and may have caused Zimbabwe losses as high as US$5 billion over the past two decades, according to the country’s mining minister. [...]

Although the company has long been beset by instability and management issues, its absence costs the Zimbabwean economy. Last year, Sekai Nzenza, the country’s minister of industry, complained that, following the closure of Ziscosteel plants and the drop in domestic production, steel imports to support local industry were costing the nation more than US$1 billion a year. [...]

The government has made successive attempts to resuscitate the majority state-owned company but with limited success. The latest attempt to revive the steel works was in April last year, when the company’s board announced it was looking for new investors. [...]

Elsewhere, several domestic and international companies have stepped in to revive large-scale steel-making in the country. Tsingshan Holding Group, one of China’s largest corporations and a major global producer of stainless steel, is investing heavily in iron ore and coke production in Zimbabwe, as well as a steel plant that alone is worth more than US$1 billion. It will become the country’s largest steel-making enterprise, and should create hundreds of jobs.

No timeline has been offered as to when Tsingshan’s new operations will start, but according to statements issued by company officials in March last year, the plant will have capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes of steel under its subsidiary Zhejiang Dinson Holdings, which already runs a ferrochrome plant in Zimbabwe. [...]