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Tinashe Makichi Business Reporter
Zimbabwe’s biggest lithium miner, Bikita Minerals will commission its tantalite processing plant next month while exploration activities to expand the earth mineral base remains on course, a senior company official said.

The pilot plant will be commissioned at a time when tantalite prices on the global market looks promising, driven by increasing demand from mobile phone battery manufacturers.

Bikita minerals general manager Mr Grant Hudson yesterday said exploration has been ongoing but the results have not been convincing but will remain optimistic on the future of the mine.

“Our pilot tantalite processing plant will be commissioned next month and commercial production is expected to start in January 2016. Now that we have finished some test runs on the plant we are now ceased with the issue of expanding our rare minerals base.

“Exploration is ongoing where we are drilling new shafts using different contractors such as Tandamanzi Drilling,” said Mr Hudson.

Mr Hudson said Bikita Minerals is looking at engaging another drilling company as efforts to quickly discover a commercial ore body gathers pace.

Current moves by the miner comes at a time when Government is proposing the setting up of a lithium processing plant as part of Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation cluster of value addition and beneficiation.

Bikita Minerals partly owned by politician cum businessman Mr Dzikamai Mavhaire since March last year made use of Kinsey’s and KW Blasting in re-configuring two main mining pits at the site.

Mr Hudson said significant overburden removal has occurred and the company has been moving up to 9 000 tonnes per day and there are three more faces available for the company to mine petalite.

A conventional and remote satellite survey has since been done on the mine and survey methodology used is the same as the one used at Batoka power project.

Bikita minerals has since commissioned a LIDAR (aerial survey) that will give an accurate (to within 15cm) 3D topographical map of the mining lease.

Companies that did work at Bikita minerals are, Inter Alia, Southern Mapping (who are also doing the Batoka Gorge surveys), Independent Resources Estimations (IRES), Kai Batla Industry Consultants, BHM Process Consultants and SGS

He said as with any mining operation the company is constantly in touch with potential investors with regard to ascertaining the availability of capital moving forward.

Bikita Minerals has been mining petalite and tantalite for the past 45 years but due to its minimal contribution to the treasury, it ended up facing criticism from policy makers.

Mr Hardson said no detailed resource study has been done before and this has necessitated the starting of the current exploration study.

Based on the resource study, adaptive mining and management processes will improve the currently less-than-exciting performance of the mine.

There are other lithium deposits in Zimbabwe and it remains to be seen if spodumene can be found in sufficient quantities, and of sufficient quality, to allow Zimbabweans to dream of one day having their own lithium carbonate plant here.

Spodumene is the lithium used to make batteries, while petalite is a lithium mineral that is used in the production of glass and ceramics. Locally mined lithium at the moment does not have a high-value product such as gold or diamonds.

Of late the mine has been operating at a below the required capacity because of costs involved in moving the mineral to the market.