Zimbabwe’s Competition and Tariff Commission has approved the agreement for the sale of the Arcadia lithium project by Prospect Resources, making its approval conditional on the establishment of a battery materials manufacturing plant in the country.
“The transaction was approved on the condition that the merged entity, its subsidiaries, affiliates and successors in title agree to produce battery-grade lithium in Zimbabwe within five years of receipt of this decision,” says the Commission in a press release.
This new development “comes only a month following the announcement of the new owner, the Chinese Huayou Cobalt, of its intention to produce the first tons of spodumene and petalite as early as next year”.
The Chinese company plans to invest 300 million dollars “in the construction of a mine and a processing plant to reach an annual capacity of 400,000 tons of lithium concentrate”.
However, it does not plan “to set up a local processing plant to produce, for example, lithium carbonate, a product prized by manufacturers of batteries” for cars.
According to Huayou Cobalt, the production of one ton of this lithium carbonate will require the mobilization of “2,800 kWh of renewable energy, 500 to 600 cubic meters of natural gas, 2.2 t of concentrated sulfuric acid (98 .5%), 2t Grade 1 Sodium Carbonate, 20kg Grade 1 Sodium Hydroxide, 4t Heavy Calcium Powder and 1.6t Food Grade Carbon Dioxide”.
