Quote:A higher Zinc grade has been discovered in large quantity along the Benue Trough by an Australian mineral firm, Symbol Mineral, the company has announced.

The Zinc, is about 300 percent above the global grade and already exploration activities have commenced in some sites, the Minister of States for Mines and Steel Development, Abubakar Bawa Bwari said yesterday.

Symbol Mineral, Chief Executive Officer, Tim Wither said in a presentation made at the World Mining event titled: Africa Down Under 2018 at Australia at the weekend that the firm obtained a 25- year license to explore the minerals in 510 km2 of exploration tenement along the Benue Trough.  He said one of the projects titled: Imperial, has 30 priority targets, most of them have shallow historic workings with visible ZINC mineralisation. “The Diamond Drilling Results confirms exceptional high grades of Zinc and the company has already commenced application of modern geophysics”, said Wither

He said another project site called: Tawny located approximately 150 km east of Abuja, 4 kilo mitre from major highway, along the Middle Benue Trough is a 7km2 exploration license.

He explained that all the projects have no funding challenges as the company adopted self-funding exploration model.

Minister said who revealed the exploration project at the Nigeria Metallurgical Industry Stakeholders Forum in Abuja yesterday said, Nigeria is now regarded as the most focus on minerals among all the African countries.

Bwari however said the greatest challenge of mining investors in Nigeria is lack of funding from the financial institutions. He said most of the international and local investors at the event lamented poor funding of mining activities by banks in Nigerian. He said the banks also have low understanding of mining operations in the country which limited their capacity to participate in such activities.

In as much as government is paying attention to mining, there is the need for banks and other participant to play their roles in order to promote mining activities.

Zinc, a blue-gray, metallic element, is a moderately good conductor of electricity.  The most common alloy is brass, which is a mixture of zinc and copper.

Zinc is relatively non-reactive in air or water. Consequently, it is applied in thin layers to iron and steel products that need to be protected from rusting. This process is called galvanizing.

Zinc is used in making rubber and paint, chemicals, agricultural applications, in the rubber industry, in TV screens, fluorescent lights and for dry cell batteries.