ZIMBABWE’S lithium industry is accelerating a massive expansion drive, with miners committing up to US$5 billion in new investment as the sector shifts from raw mineral exports to large-scale domestic processing of battery-grade chemicals, signalling one of the country’s most ambitious beneficiation pushes yet.
The local lithium industry — Africa’s largest and the world’s sixth-largest producer — is undergoing a major transition from exporting raw ores to domestic processing of high-value battery precursor chemicals, including lithium sulphate.
The sector is dominated by six large-scale mining companies operating under strict quota-based conditions that require investment in local beneficiation and processing. These include Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, Bikita Minerals, Kamativi Lithium Company, Sabi Star Mine, Sandawana Mines and Gwanda Lithium Mine.
Speaking at the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe annual conference in Victoria Falls last week, Mutapa Energy Minerals chief executive Innocent Rukweza, who represents lithium producers, said the six entities had completed projects worth US$2 billion.
“Then what is coming up and I want to reiterate this, especially to our regulators, to our partners and all the stakeholders, that we remain, as an industry, committed to the story of lithium,” he said.
“And we want to make it better than what it is as a collective. And as you can see, we have US$1,45 billion worth of projects that are coming on line.
“And these are earmarked for nothing else, but for beneficiation in compliance with government policy. So we want to put up the sulphate plants.
“We want to finish the concentrator plants. And we then want to deal with other recoveries of some of the trace metals that are in our tailings.”
He said the companies were pumping US$1,45 billion into new projects with investments reaching US$3,4 billion since the advent of the lithium boom.
“And this excludes, to borrow lingo from the previous gold guys, that this is excluding brownfield exploration. This is also excluding certain greenfield exploration that is earmarked for that,” Rukweza said.
“So the number can easily be US$4 billion or US$5 billion, but this is the level of commitment that we are putting through. We have the anticipated projects and then we have projected concentrated export. The peak that we are likely to achieve is US$978 million, which is equally a billion.”
Rukweza also revealed that lithium producers have set a target to complete the projects by 2030.
“Up to 2030, according to our projections, the lithium industry will be registering a peak turnover based on lithium sulphate in compliance with the beneficial policy in NDS2, US$3,2 billion.
“That would be our peak production or turnover in dollar value. So this is an infant that is going to mature at one point and we are looking and projecting that we will be producing 344 000 tonnes of lithium sulphate at that point in time.
“There’s a mandate, we’ve been mandated, that we set up laboratories, number one, at a mine level, number two, at an industry level, the two laboratories that we are supposed to set up.”
He said the producers were, however, waiting for government guidance on the two laboratories that they are supposed to put up as an industry collectively.
“That is the work that we have done so far, spending more than US$6,1 million to upgrade our lab so that they test the full spectrum of what we find in the lithium products that we produce,” Rukweza said.
“And we are hoping that within the set timelines before the next round of renewals is up, we will have complied with the letters that have to do with the quotas that we received.”-newsday
