Implats weighs Hartley, Darwendale and Karo as Zimbabwe growth options

Implats is weighing three separate options for expanding its footprint in Zimbabwe beyond its existing Zimplats and Mimosa operations: the historic Hartley Complex, the long-stalled Darwendale project, and a potential role in Tharisa's Karo Platinum mine. Group head of corporate affairs Johan Theron said of Hartley, where BHP invested $585m between 1989 and 1999 for a return of only about $40m, that "every time there was a better option, so we went in another direction. But it's now on the radar screen."

Extension rather than expansion

Chief executive Nico Muller has consistently favoured what the company calls "extension over expansion," and Zimplats, which is 87% owned by Implats, has already repurposed some of Hartley's old processing infrastructure. Darwendale, originally unveiled in 2014 as a $450m underground project, saw its Russian backers withdraw in 2022 when PGM prices fell; the project is now controlled by Great Dyke Investments, part of Zimbabwe's Kuvimba Mining House, and Implats is reportedly looking at a smaller $50m open-pit version that would lack its own processing facilities. Theron described the project as "close to us."

A stake in Karo through Tharisa

The most advanced of the three options is Karo Platinum, the $545m project targeting 226,000 oz of annual production that Tharisa was finalising the remaining $300m of investment for. Tharisa chief executive Phoevos Pouroulis described Karo's land package, which holds a 96-million-ounce total resource, in generational terms, saying "we talk about multigenerational assets. This is one of those where, 100 years from today, we could still be operating."

Taken together, the three options illustrated how seriously Implats was treating Zimbabwe as a growth region even while its South African peers remained focused on capital discipline at home. None of the three projects had been committed to at this stage, but the fact that Implats was prepared to discuss Hartley, Darwendale and Karo in the same breath signalled that Zimbabwe's Great Dyke, long promised as one of the world's great untapped PGM resources, was finally attracting the kind of serious major-producer interest that had eluded it for years. Analysts said the willingness of a major producer to weigh three separate Zimbabwean options simultaneously reflected growing confidence that the country's regulatory and currency risks, while still real, no longer ruled out serious investment by South Africa's largest platinum groups.

Sources

• Miningmx: Implats weighs platinum growth projects in Zimbabwe, 17 Apr 2026