Indian Critical Minerals Firm LOHUM Starts Zimbabwe Mining, Targets 30,000 Tonnes Lithium Carbonate

Critical minerals company LOHUM aims to produce about 30,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate annually from its newly acquired Zimbabwe assets within two to three years, founder and chief executive officer Rajat Verma told Business Standard.

Mining has begun on 10 spodumene-bearing blocks covering roughly 1,100 hectares. Drilling and blasting are under way, with excavation of the first ore due shortly.

“The operations have commenced. We expect the first batch of ores to start coming out in the next one week or so,” Verma said.

The company announced its first ore dispatch from Zimbabwe on Wednesday, calling itself the first Indian firm to start lithium operations globally.

Ore will be mined and initially processed in Zimbabwe, with refining into lithium carbonate carried out at a new Indian plant whose site has not been disclosed.

“The capacity that we are setting up everywhere as to how much are we mining, how much are we converting into crude lithium sulfate and how much are we ultimately converting into pure lithium carbonate is about 30,000 tons per year,” Verma said.

LOHUM is also building a cathode active material facility, which could make it a buyer of its own output. It already sells lithium carbonate to customers in India and abroad.

The firm holds preferred rights over 90 additional blocks. The first 10 are expected to support around 300,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent over their life, valued in situ at roughly $7 billion at current prices.

Verma said overseas acquisitions must clear three tests, cheap purchase, quick production and local value addition, as Chinese firms are already entrenched in many resource-rich countries.

“We are already 15 years behind. And so if you get an asset that needs another 15 years to develop, you will be 30 years behind,” he said.

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