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China's Sinomine Group Completes Construction of Plants at Lithium Mine in Zimbabwe

In 2022, China's Sinomine Resource Group acquired Zimbabwe's largest lithium mine, Bikita, for $180 million; the lithium mine is one of Africa's oldest and taps into some of the world's largest deposits of lithium.
Sputnik
China's Sinomine Resource Group announced the completion of a spodumene concentrate plant and petalite plant at its lithium mine Bikita in Zimbabwe and that trial production has started.
According to the company's statement, the petalite plant is expected to produce 480,000 tons of the mineral annually.
In turn, the newly constructed spodumene plant has an annual capacity of 2 millions tons.

"Once the Bikita Minerals Lithium Mine expansion project reaches its production capacity, it is expected to produce 300,000 tons of high-quality chemical grade spodumene concentrate annually," the statement said, adding that the new plants will create an additional 1,000 jobs.

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Sinomine is not the first Chinese company to start producing battery minerals from acquired Zimbabwean mines.
Last July, the Chinese battery minerals producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt acquired the Arcadia mine in Zimbabwe from Australia's Prospect Resources and its Zimbabwean partners in a deal valued at $422 million.
This March, the company announced the start of trial production of lithium concentrates.
In May, another Chinese company, Chengxin Lithium Group Co, commissioned a 300,000 tons per year lithium concentrator at the Sabi Star mine in eastern Zimbabwe.