HARARE, March 29 (Reuters) - Premier African Minerals said on Wednesday it had finished building a lithium
processing plant at its Zulu mine in Zimbabwe and expected to
start production of spodumene concentrate later this week.
Spodumene is a lithium ore with high concentration of
lithium, a key component in the production of batteries for
electric vehicles.
Premier built the plant, which has capacity to produce
nearly 50,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate annually, as part
of a $35 million offtake deal signed last year with China's
CanMax Technologies (formerly Suzhou TA&A) .
"We expect to produce spodumene, a lepidolite mica rich
concentrate and a tantalum rich concentrate, late this week
provided that final formal outstanding approvals from certain
Zimbabwean authorities are received," Premier CEO George Roach
said in a statement.
Zimbabwe holds some of the world's biggest hard-rock lithium
deposits and has recently attracted about $700 million in
investment from several Chinese firms, including CanMax, which
also bought a 13.38% stake in Premier last year, Zhejiang Huayou
Cobalt , Sinomine Resource Group and
Chengxin Lithium Group .
On March 22, Huayou said it had started trial production
from its Arcadia lithium project 40 kilometres (24.85 miles)
outside Zimbabwe's capital Harare. Huayou said the $300 million
Arcadia plant has capacity to process 4.5 million tonnes of
lithium ore at Arcadia, producing 50,000 tonnes of lithium
carbonate equivalent lithium concentrate.
(Reporting by Nelson Banya
Editing by Mark Potter)
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