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CEO of the freshly minted Mutapa Energy Minerals has laid out a decisive, phased roadmap for the flagship Sandawana lithium mine, placing a firm bet on the metal’s price recovery and Zimbabwe’s beneficiation agenda, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
Speaking at a Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) press conference, the CEO, Mr Innocent Rukweza, confirmed that the first critical step—the construction of a major lithium concentrator plant at Sandawana—is on track to begin within months, with a hard deadline to start building by June 2025. This move is the operational cornerstone of the broader Mutapa restructuring, which dissolved the Kuvimba Mining House model into focused verticals.
Rukweza’s outline reveals a clear, two-phase strategy aligned with national policy:
Concentrate Plant (Immediate Priority): “We are hoping that before the half-year this year, around June latest, we would have started constructing a lithium processing plant which does concentrate,” he stated. This aligns with previous announcements that the US$270 million facility, with a 600,000-tonne annual ore capacity, will be built under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model with Chinese partners Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Tsingshan Holding Group. Commissioning is targeted for early 2027.
Sulphate and Carbonates (The Strategic Leap): The ultimate goal is to move beyond concentrate to battery-grade materials. “From concentrates we go to the next stage to do lithium carbon and just battery-making material,” Rukweza said, explicitly naming lithium carbonates as part of the future plan. However, he acknowledged the complexity of the leap to sulphate, noting the government’s 2027 deadline to ban concentrate exports presents a “very difficult timeline.” Mutapa Energy Minerals will seek “a little bit of dispensation” while aggressively pursuing partners to make the full supply chain a reality. “We are very much seized with that idea,” he emphasised.
The accelerated push for Sandawana’s development is being catalysed by a favourable shift in the global market. After a brutal two-year slump that saw prices drop nearly 90%, lithium prices have shown a steady recovery since December. This rebound, driven by sustained long-term demand forecasts for electric vehicles and battery storage, validates Mutapa’s strategic timing.
Rukweza’s plan effectively rides this nascent wave. By aiming to have the concentrator operational by 2027—a date previous Kuvimba CEO Trevor Barnard directly linked to a price recovery forecast—Mutapa Energy Minerals is positioning Sandawana to capture value from an expected tighter market.
“Our forecast is that lithium prices will recover sometime in the year 2027, right at a point in time when we expect the concentrator plant to be in production,” Barnard had earlier noted.
The current price uplift adds immediate credibility and urgency to the investment.
Rukweza firmly anchored the strategy within Zimbabwe’s national development frameworks.
“We are aware of the deadline, and obviously, in line with the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2), we need to beneficiate as much as we can,” he said.
The Sandawana project is a direct manifestation of this policy, transforming Zimbabwe from an exporter of raw ore to a producer of concentrated, and eventually refined, battery-grade material.
The project is poised to become a central pillar of the country’s Vision 2030, aiming to elevate Zimbabwe to upper-middle-income status. By controlling the entire value chain from its wholly owned national asset, Mutapa Energy Minerals seeks to ensure that the wealth generated from this strategic mineral fuels broader economic development.
With the plan firmly set, Rukweza signalled that the door is open for further collaboration. The pursuit of partners for both the concentrate and sulphate stages indicates a pragmatic approach to financing and expertise. As the mining world converges at the upcoming Investing in African Mining Indaba, Sandawana and the Mutapa Energy Minerals vertical will likely be presented as a premier investment proposition—a nationally owned, strategically timed project with a clear path to integrated battery material production.
The challenges are significant. Meeting the aggressive construction timeline, securing final regulatory and Cabinet approvals, and navigating the technical complexities of sulphate and carbonate production are formidable tasks. However, under the new, focused leadership of the Mutapa Energy Minerals vertical, freed from the old conglomerate structure, the path is clearer.
Sandawana is no longer just a mine; it is the proving ground for Mutapa’s new specialist model and for Zimbabwe’s lithium ambitions. With a concentrator rising on the horizon, lithium prices on the rebound, and carbonates in the strategic plan, Mutapa Energy Minerals is staking its claim in the global energy transition, one tonne of beneficiated material at a time.
