Sandawana Mines a member of Kuvimba Mining Group is set to spend US $220 million to construct a lithium processing plant for the company to be able to produce spodumene concentrate of around 6% purity which is internationally accepted in the battery industry.
Addressing the media in the capital yesterday, Kuvimba Group of Mines Director Energy Cluster Trevor Barnard said the mining giant will be expecting 100 million tonnes of lithium in total after the completion of all four phases of the project which will make the mining company one of the best in the world.
He added that part of the money will be used for the development of infrastructure such as roads, electrical power, housing, and many projects that will benefit the community.
“We recently launched an exploration campaign and the campaign is divided into four phases of which we completed the drilling of the first phase and the chemical analysis of the first phase will be completed by the end of November.
“From our expectations, we are expecting to declare a substantial resource of about 30 million tonnes of lithium at a grade of 1.6% and that is a significant resource.
“We also launched phase 2 of exploration already and the drilling is ongoing and as we speak we are expecting to finish it during the first quarter of next year.
“We are expecting to double the size of the resource by that time. Sandawana mines with that high grade, and with that level of resource size will be a very significant size of resource in the world the biggest in Zimbabwe.
“We are also doing further phases of exploration phase three and four and the overall expectation is that we will end with a resource size of around 100 million tonnes in totality. So from that perspective that will be one of the biggest in the world,” he said.
He added that the company has so far decided to develop a 3 million tonnes per annum mine and a processing plant at Sandawana mines in the short term.
“The next step is the development of the mine and the project. Because of the purity and simplicity of our geology, we only have one lithium mineral called spodumene, and we will be able to build a basic and conventional mining process.
“It will be an open pit mine and will probably consist of open pits across the resource and the processing plant will consist of typical crushing, and screening, followed by a milling and flotation section and a drying and packing section.
“The spodumene concentrate which we estimate to be somewhere between 600 000 tonnes per annum for this phase will be exported through the Eastern ports of Africa and most of the product will go to China for further processing,”
“We are looking at various fundraising options, we can’t discuss the options because they are still private and confidential but we are having various discussions with partners to finance this project,” he added.
The company’s commitment to the local community is evident in the employment of 1500 individuals, a significant boost to the region’s workforce. Notably, 20% of these positions are filled by women, marking a laudable step towards gender inclusivity and empowerment in the mining sector.
