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Minister Winston Chitando

ZIMBABWE aims to supply 10 percent of the world’s lithium and could reach 20 percent, the Mines and Mining Development Minister from Africa’s top producer of the alkali metal used in batteries for electric vehicles said yesterday.

“We believe we have the potential to actually account for 20 percent of global demand when all known lithium resources are being exploited,” Minister Winston Chitando told a mining investment conference in Harare.

Zimbabwe is a top 10 of lithium producer but currently produces only a fraction of the worldwide total. Prices for lithium have more than doubled in the past two years on forecasts for massive demand from the electric vehicle industry, Reuters reported. This has sparked work on a flurry of new mines and expansion plans for existing ones.

Meanwhile, Australia-listed lithium company Prospect Resources has added to its lithium resource base in Zimbabwe by exercising an option to acquire the Good Days project, near Mutoko, north-eastern Zimbabwe. The eight square kimometre project contains numerous mineralised pegmatites, including historical workings for spodumene and tantalite. Prospect had until April 2018 to decide on whether it will acquire a 70 percent interest in the project from Zimbabwean company Barrington Resources. The company said on Wednesday that it had exercised its option early, following “positive changes under the new Zimbabwe government”.

Since the option was entered into in June last year, Prospect has drilled the known mineralised pegmatite zone to verify the historic geological model and has undertaken two phases of soil sampling to identify other areas, which may host economic lithium pegmatites. A total of 2 556 soil samples were collected from 51 km of surveyed lines on the western extension to the previously identified Ford-Ntabeni lithium pegmatites swarm. A total of 195 samples returned anomalous values greater than the statistically determined threshold of 66 ppm, of which 33 samples were greater than 100 ppm. A peak value of 8 531 ppm was achieved. — Reuters/Miningweekly.