Zimbabwe signs $4.2 billion platinum deal

A company associated with mining entrepreneur Loucas Pouroulis, Karo Resources, has signed a $4.2 billion platinum investment deal with the government of Zimbabwe. This will go down as the first significant investment since the fall of President Robert Mugabe in November.

According to Zimbabwe's Mines Minister, Winston Chitando, this investment will be the largest to date in Zimbabwe’s mining industry.

Karo’s platinum project will start up in 2020 and will produce 1.4 million ounces a year of platinum-group metals at full output, Chitando said. Zimbabwe has the second-biggest reserves of the metals after South Africa.

Pouroulis has a long history in southern African mining having set up South African platinum-mining ventures Lefkochrysos, which means ‘white gold’ in Greek, and Eland Platinum. Eland was sold to Xstrata Plc in 2007 for the equivalent of $1.1 billion.