eBusiness Weekly
Taurai Mangudhla
Investors in Zimbabwe’s largest lithium producer Bikita Minerals plan to spend about $5 million in exploration activities on the miner’s claims for battery grade lithium, Wilfried Pabst has said.
An undisclosed amount will also be injected to upgrade plant and equipment in order to improve production capacity.
“The grade we are producing right now is not battery grade although we believe there is potential. We are investing $4 to $5 million into exploration so that we do some sampling,” Pabst told the Business Weekly in an interview.
This comes after the company last year announced plans to invest capex in the region of $7 million for plant upgrade and geological exploration with a view to double production in 2018 to about 80 000 tons.
In 2016, according to information at hand, Bikita Minerals produced about 40 000t, 10 000t shy of peak production.
Pabst said the company will take advantage on renewed interest on Zimbabwe to grow its business and rising demand for lithium on the global market going forward. Lithium is seen as a major mineral of interest going forward as demand for electric vehicles is envisaged to grow.
Statistics aggregated on the global market show that Chile has the largest lithium reserves estimated at 7, 5 million tonnes followed by China (3,2 million tonnes), Australia (2,7 million tonnes) and Argentina (2 million tonnes). Zimbabwe’s reserves are pegged at a mere 23 000t although indications are that Bikita Minerals alone could have as much as 11 million tonnes on its claims.
The total demand for lithium globally is expected to reach 422,614 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent spurred by increases in battery demand will be a strong driver of lithium consumption in the near future, but producers are currently limited in their ability to match demands.
Research also projects the average annual price for 99 percent lithium carbonate to average $7,60 per kilogram, up from about $5,89 in 2015.
Lithium is expected to be among the major drivers in Zimbabwe’s mining growth in the medium term with the country, according to Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando, targeting to produce 10 percent of global supply in four years and around 20 percent thereafter.
Zimbabwe is currently the world’s fifth largest producer of lithium after Australia, Chile, Argentina and China.
