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Zimbabwe is building a lithium processing plant that anticipates producing 450,000 tonnes of lithium annually. This gives fresh hope to revive its ailing economy.
Zimbabwe is building a lithium processing plant that anticipates producing 450,000 tonnes of lithium annually. This gives fresh hope to revive its ailing economy.
Things are on the right track for Zimbabwe in terms of sustainable exploitation of raw materials, 450,000 tonnes of lithium will be processed each year in this East African country rich in mineral deposits. Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe (PLZ) was recently granted government authorisation to do just that. The subsidiary of the Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt has just inaugurated a new plant, based in Harare at a cost of US $300 million, and work on this facility took nine months. This initiative will position Zimbabwe in the global electric vehicle market, given that its lithium potential is increasingly being courted by carmakers.
Such is the case of China’s Build Your Dreams (BYD), which controls six mines on the continent in 2022 with a view to manufacturing 27.7 million lithium-ion batteries by 2029 at its Shenzhen plant in China. But Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has banned exports of unprocessed lithium from December 2022, in favour of local processing. This is paying off in terms of new processing plants in the country.
Read Also:
https://trendsnafrica.com/zimbabwe-lithium-mines-attract-chinese-investment/
https://trendsnafrica.com/china-opens-a-lithium-processing-unit-in-zimbabwe/
Zimbabwe thus joins Australia, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina in the Top 8 of the world’s leading lithium producers. The competition promises to be tight for electric vehicle manufacturers, as the price of lithium has risen by 500%, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
