Prospect Lithium Zim spends US$700m on Arcadia project

PROSPECT Lithium Zimbabwe (PLZ) has spent in excess of US$700 million towards acquisition and establishment of a processing plant at its Arcadia Lithium Mine in Goromonzi District in Mashonaland East Province.

The company is a subsidiary of China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Limited, one of the world’s largest energy lithium-ion battery materials and new cobalt materials producer.

The expenditure on the Arcadia project includes the US$422 million that Houyou Cobalt spent in 2021 to acquire the asset from Prospect Resources, an Australian-headquartered mining group which at the moment is developing the Step Aside Lithium project, also in Goromonzi.

PLZ whose reserves at the Arcadia Lithium Mine is at 43 million tonnes, has installed a US$300 million processing plant and the company commenced exporting lithium concentrate in April last year.

Speaking during a tour of the mine by Mashonaland East Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution Dr Apollonia Munzverengwi on Tuesday, PLZ assistant general manager and spokesperson Rugare Dhobbie said:

“Our total investment into the lithium project is at US$700 million plus and . . .the reserve is at 43 million tonnes.”

PLZ commenced plant construction at the Arcadia project in Goromonzi in the second quarter of 2022 while operational readiness preceded pre-stripping and mine development that took effect in the third quarter of the same year.

The first quarter of last year saw the processing plant which was constructed in a record time of between nine and 10 months being commissioned.

Dhobbie said the plant was supposed to have taken two years to build but because of PLZ’s culture of hard work and the willpower to meet set deadlines, the mine started the production of lithium concentrate on February 28, 2023.

Towards the end of April last year, the firm exported its first product before the processing plant was commissioned by President Mnangagwa in July.

So far, the company does open-pit mining operations with the type of mining being strip ratio, which refers to the amount of waste (overburden) that must be removed to release a given ore quantity.

It is a number or ratio that express how much waste is mined per unit ore.

The units of a stripping ratio vary between mine types. The company produces petalite and spodumene which are PLZ has two stage-crushing units, screening, stockpiling, high pressure grinding and petalite is then produced from the density medium separation plant.

After floatation, the spodumene is also extracted and after it has come out together with petalite it is packaged before shipped out of the country destined for the export market.

PLZ intends to increase its investment at the Arcadia Lithium project investing into the tantalite processing plant.

“We are also talking of the third production unit that’s going to come. ‘It will actually be a back-end production unit that we are actually working on right now. It’s a tantalite production unit,” said Dhobbie.

As the world transitions to a green economy, lithium has become a vital raw material required to promote clean energy sources.

The base metal is used in the production of lithium-ion batteries for powering electric vehicles and other electric devices or solar energy systems.

In this context, Zimbabwe has in recent years witnessed increased investments in the lithium sub-sector with about eight lithium exploration and mining projects presently at different stages of development.

Some of the assets include the Zulu Lithium Mine, Sandawana Mines owned by Zimbabwe’s largest mining group, Kuvimba Mining House, the Step Aside Lithium project, Kamativi Lithium Mine, Bikita Minerals, and Mutoko Lithium Mine.

“We pride ourselves to be having the biggest resource in terms of lithium and all others (local lithium producers) are smaller.

“We don’t know what Kuvimba will be, but we are still holding on to be the biggest before Kuvimba unveils itself, but maybe we’ll still remain the biggest,” she said.-ebsinessweekly