(Recasts with refinery postponement)
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
HARARE, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Zimplats ZIM.AX , the Zimbabwean unit of the world's second largest platinum producer Impala Platinum IMPJ.J , has deferred rebooting its mothballed refinery to early next year due to cash constraints, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
Platinum mines are under pressure from President Robert Mugabe's government to refine the metal locally as the southern African nation seeks to derive more value from its minerals.
Zimplats, which is 87 percent owned by Implats, inherited a base metals refinery built in the 1990s but never used it, saying it was outdated.
Last year in January Zimbabwe imposed a 15 percent tax on raw platinum exports to force companies to process it locally but suspended the levy in July after the mines agreed to support local platinum processing. chief executive Alex Mhembere said its refinery would no longer be commissioned next July, blaming the delay on a cash squeeze caused by low platinum prices.
The cost of the upgrade, initially expected to be $100 million, would rise due to the longer timeline.
"We were expecting to commission in July this year but we are now looking into early 2017," Mhembere told reporters and analysts during a results presentation.
Earlier, Zimplats said low metal prices will continue to exert serious pressure on its cash flow after slipping into a loss for the half year to December 31 on weak platinum prices.
Zimplats reported a $600,000 loss compared to a profit of $3.9 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 12 percent to $204 million.
Platinum sales by volume rose 27 percent to 130,342 ounces as Zimplats tried to make up for lower prices, which averaged $948 an ounce, down 29 percent from a year earlier.
Mhembere said as part of the measures to cope with weak prices, Zimplats had cut salaries for management by between 2.5 percent and 15 percent and the firm would not increase wages this year.
"Our view is that retrenchments are absolutely the last measure we will have to take. We started with cutting salaries so that we can preserve jobs," Mhembere said.