The Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt has opened a $300 million lithium processing plant in Zimbabwe. The plant is located in the Goromonzi District in Mashonaland East Province and has the capacity to process 4.5 million metric tons of hard rock lithium into concentrate for export per year. This is a significant addition to global lithium supplies as demand for the metal continues to skyrocket.
The plant began initial processing in April 2023 and has already exported close to 30,000 tons. This is a promising start for the plant, and it is expected to play a major role in meeting the growing demand for lithium in the years to come.
Trevor Barnard, the General Manager of Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, explained that the company plans to process up to 450,000 tons of concentrate per year. This will then be further processed into battery-grade lithium in other countries.
The processing plant is strategically located near the 26.9 million-ton open-pit Arcadia lithium mine. It falls under the efforts of the Zimbabwean government to position the country as a lithium hub and follows a ban on unprocessed exports of lithium last year.
Speaking at the commissioning ceremony, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa described lithium as “the mineral of today and tomorrow…and value-adding will position our nation as an emerging and competitive actor in the global lithium chain.
