- Pan-African miner Mwana Africa Plc (MWA.L) said it is looking to carry out a rights issue over the next couple of months, partly to raise finance for its 53-percent owned Bindura Nickel operations in Zimbabwe.

It is looking to restart some operations at Bindura'a Trojan mine in six to seven months, before restarting the rest of the complex.

"We will need a fairly large amount of money," Chief Executive Kalaa Mpinga told the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit, but he declined to specify the size of any potential rights issue.

Bindura Nickel Corp, the only integrated nickel miner, smelter and refinery in Africa, was shut down in November 2008 due to low nickel prices and operational problems.

Resuming production at the Trojan mine is estimated to cost about $50 million, while a revival of the whole Bindura complex would cost around $150 million.

"We are very conscious that it not possible to raise $150 million in Zimbabwe today, this is why we have decided to go in for a phased approach," he told the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit, held at the Reuters office in London.

Mwana said it is confident of raising funds and has already started preparing some workers at Bindura for the restart.

It is also in talks over offtake agreements for the nickel.

The AIM-listed company posted a net loss in the first half to end September, although Mpinga said he expects an improvement in the second half and a move into positive territory this time next year.

ZIMBABWE

The recently reopened Freda Rebecca gold mine in Zimbabwe is running at about 2,400 ounces a month and is on track to reach its 30,000 ounces per year target by the end of this month, he said.

The company plans to increase production to more than 50,000 ounces of gold a year on completion of Phase II at around the end of September.

It also expects to get the first tranche, up to $4 million, of a loan from the Industrial Development Corp (IDC) of South Africa to accelerate the expansion of the Freda Rebecca, by the end of this month.

The IDC was the first South African organization to invest in Zimbabwe as Mwana started talks with the IDC before foreign exchange controls were removed, and other African institutions are also becoming active, he noted.

He was upbeat about operating in Zimbabwe and said the country was the most straightforward country in the African continent in which to mine.

"The world has this perception that Zimbabwe has totally collapsed," he said. "In fact the infrastructure is still there. People forget that probably after South Africa, Zimbabwe has had the longest history of formal mining."

"The perception is that it is the closest thing to hell, but in fact everything is very straightforward. Our biggest challenge was always the economic policy and was never the politics."

Shares in Mwana -- which also has projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Ghana and Botswana -- have fallen 8 percent this year, valuing the company at almost $70 million