Good News & Bad News, page-17250

I followed that trail and found some more re mines in Zimbabwe. For one it was noted that they produced technical grade and were investigating if they could produce battery grade in the future.

For another it was noted that it was uneconomical to produce battery grade and included comments about lack of reliable and sufficient power to run a plant for that output, plus missing the required “inputs”. Possibly that’s just a case of throwing more money at the problem (foreign investment), but … what would that do to the cost base of the product and thus the price of lithium sold I wonder?

Here’s a snippet of interest perhaps.

Lithium developers are under pressure to make battery-grade lithium, but they say Zimbabwe does not have the infrastructure or the inputs to make this possible. The Competition and Tariff Commission recently told Huayou Cobalt, which is developing the Arcadia mine near Harare, to commit to producing battery-grade lithium in five years. But the company said this will not be profitable.

MaxMind’s Mugova agrees. While the company does see itself smelting lithium concentrate into lithium hydroxide in the future, this would need investment of at least US$250 million plus reliable, clean energy.

“You would not want to build a smelter where you will have frequent power cuts. That on its own will affect the operations of the smelter. So, we need to have reliable power first to confidently set up a plant of that nature,” Mugova said.

https://newzwire.live/new-lithium-d...-in-sabi-star-mine-sees-first-output-in-2023/