Story by Courage Bushe
ZHELI Lithium in Zvishavane is accelerating efforts to add value to Zimbabwe’s mineral resources, with a US$10 million lithium processing plant currently producing 18,000 tonnes of lithium concentrate monthly. The company also plans to establish additional facilities to convert the mineral into lithium sulphate and, in the longer term, a battery manufacturing plant.
Speaking during a tour of the site, ZHELI Lithium Plant General Manager, Mr Kudakwashe Zimondi, emphasised the company’s commitment to beneficiation and value addition.
“This tour has been helpful to us in a great way because we managed to discuss ways of beneficiation and value addition. As a company, we have put in place plans to construct a battery manufacturing plant at this site. This will greatly improve how we conduct our operations”.
The investment aligns with government directives to promote local processing of minerals, a strategy reinforced by the recent ban on raw mineral exports. Vice President, General (Rtd) Dr Constantino Chiwenga, who visited the mine on Wednesday, reiterated the national agenda.
“We want to see all the minerals that we are producing, including lithium, being processed here. We would want to see that vision, which Zimbabwe has, to be economically developed using the resources that we have locally. We want to see various products being manufactured locally using the minerals we are producing.
“We need to beneficiate the mineral locally. The market for these products is there in our continent. We will export after beneficiating. We want to extract, process, beneficiate, and manufacture instead of having all our products exported out of the country,” he said.
Through beneficiation, Zimbabwe is set to further grow its mining sector, which is key towards the attainment of an upper-middle-income society status by 2030.
