Online Reporter
The Government made a big, bold announcement on February 25, banning all lithium concentrate and raw minerals exports.
It was a market-moving decision by the continent’s number one producer of the battery metal, which also accounts for up to seven percent of global lithium carbonate equivalent supply.
Prices of the commodity immediately rose in China, which imports up to 15 percent of its lithium spodumene demand from Zimbabwe.
Stocks surged in China, the US and other key jurisdictions as investors moved to price in a tightening supply chain.
Announcing the indefinite and immediate suspension, Mines and Mining Development Minister Polite Kambamura said authorities took that decision in a bid to curb mineral leakages and to encourage investors to enhance their local value addition capacity.
Two months later, the country achieved a milestone which further advances its charge towards greater domestication of the lithium value chain.
Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe (PLZ), the country’s largest lithium miner, announced on Monday that it had exported its first, the country’s first, and Africa’s first shipment of lithium sulphate, a material which comes after lithium concentrate on the lithium pipeline.
This was a result of a $400 million investment in the building of a lithium sulphate production facility. Construction of the plant, with a capacity to produce 80 000 tonnes of the product yearly, started late last year.
“Construction is complete — first export (lithium sulphate) was this weekend. We are not at liberty yet to disclose tonnage, but we received our quota from the ministry under the new framework,” PLZ public relations manager Mrs Patience Chizodza told our Harare Bureau.
This development is worth celebrating indeed. It highlights that the Government is on the right path in its thrust to enhance local beneficiation of the mineral, a key component in the production of high-performance lithium-ion batteries.
By doing that, we are localising more value, value which we have been losing all these years when we exported just white rock. We create more and higher-quality jobs, we improve the skills of our people and earn more in dollars and cents by exporting processed products.
We commend PLZ for their path-breaking investment and urge others, including Bikita Minerals and Sabi Star, to accelerate their investments in lithium sulphate production facilities.
While we are encouraged by the progress that is being made, we would be much happier when the local lithium value chain grows to in-country manufacture of batteries.
That, we note, will take some time and big investments in reliable electricity generation, relevant technologies and skills and immense political will.
However, the Government’s bold February 25 announcement and the step the country took up the chain, as demonstrated by the first sulphate exports this week, are clear evidence that we will, in the near future, have a made-in-Zimbabwe battery, a made-in-Zimbabwe solar panel and the like.
That way, we ditch the from-pit-to-port production model, which pauperises and demeans us.
In saying this, we are mindful that there are multiple other resources that the country is endowed with, such as tobacco, platinum, chrome, diamonds, natural gas, etc., which must follow the lithium route.
Sidumisile Mabena
Bongani Ndlovu