News: RIO Zimbabwe's Kuvimba signs $310 mln lithium mine deal

Zimbabwe's state-owned Kuvimba Mining House has signed a $310 million deal with a consortium of British and Chinese investors for the construction of a lithium concentrator, the company announced on Thursday.

Kuvimba said in a statement it has signed a binding Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT) agreement with the consortium for a 3 million metric ton per year ore processing plant at its Sandawana mine, where Rio Tinto RIO.L (RIO) mined emeralds for three decades until 1993.

A lithium concentrator, the first stage in processing the metal, crushes and leaches ore to produce saleable concentrates that are further refined into lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide used in batteries. Zimbabwe currently does not refine lithium, but exports concentrates to China for further processing.

The company did not name the investors, only saying they were "leading foreign British and Chinese companies in the global lithium market". Kuvimba said the build-operate-transfer arrangement would lapse after six years.

The plant is set to be commissioned within 18 months, producing 600,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate annually, Kuvimba said.

Zimbabwe, Africa's top producer of lithium, which is used in electric vehicle batteries and to store renewable energy, has attracted more than $1 billion investment in lithium projects since 2021, mostly from Chinese battery metal firms, according to company filings.

Some of the Chinese firms with mines in Zimbabwe include Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt 603799.SS , Sinomine Resource Group 002738.SZ , Chengxin Lithium Group 002240.SZ , Canmax Technologies 300390.SZ and Yahua Group 002497.SZ .