Minera Refineries opens what it calls Zambia's first gold refinery, promising to pull small-scale miners into the formal market

Minera Refineries Zambia Limited has unveiled a gold refinery that it describes as the first in Zambia, with equipment it says can process gold to 99 percent purity and, using its in-house laboratory, reach 99.99 percent. The plant was shown during the Mining and Investment Insaka at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka. Until now Zambian gold has mostly left the country raw or only partly processed, to be refined abroad, and the buyers abroad have kept much of the value that refining adds. Minera's managing director, Andrew Mukupa Katandula, presented the refinery as a way of keeping more of that value at home. The company says gold from the Mpika area was refined about two months before the launch and came out at a very high purity, and that this has attracted potential buyers. Those claims come from the company. The larger hope is that the refinery will draw small-scale and artisanal gold miners into the formal system. The figure of more than US$1.8 billion has been put forward as the value that could be unlocked by formalising that sector, and the launch comes as government tries to reduce the country's dependence on copper. Copper brought in about US$7.5 billion in 2024, roughly 66 percent of goods exports, while gold brought in US$262 million, about 2 percent. The numbers on gold are far apart. Zambia is often said to produce about 3.5 tonnes a year, while official statistics put recorded output at 2,237 kilogrammes in 2023 and 3,141.81 kilogrammes in 2024. A national export diversification strategy had aimed for 18,000 kilogrammes by 2025, a level recorded output has not come near. The United Arab Emirates reported importing 29.1 tonnes of gold worth US$1.79 billion from Zambia in 2023, while the Ministry of Mines recorded 2.24 tonnes for the same year. Artisanal mining rights rose to 1,068 in 2025 from 680 in 2024, and the Bank of Zambia had bought 3,051.3 kilogrammes of gold worth US$396.3 million by the end of September 2025. Minera