(Bloomberg) — China's Zijin Mining Group Co. wants to start producing lithium in the Democratic Republic of Congo early next year from one of the world's largest reserves of battery metal.
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Zijin is accelerating activity at a site in southeast Congo still claimed by AVZ Minerals Ltd. The Australian company has initiated arbitration proceedings against the African country's government as part of its efforts to regain an exploration permit.
Production of the Manono project is expected to start in the first quarter of 2026, a Zijin spokesperson said by email. That would make it the first working lithium mine in Congo, the world's second-largest copper producer and the largest source of cobalt.
Chinese companies, including Zijin, are investing heavily in Africa's lithium supplies, from Mali to Zimbabwe, even after prices fell nearly 90% from a peak in 2022. They are trying to cut off raw materials to refineries at home in anticipation of an increasing future consumption of the metal.
While the current supply glut is likely to persist in the short term, there is still “room for demand from the global new energy vehicle and energy storage industries” in the longer term, Zijin said in September. The company's other lithium projects are in China and Argentina.
Zijin – which has copper, gold, lithium and zinc mines spread across five continents – is developing Manono in a joint venture with the Congolese state and was granted a full mining license four months ago. The holdings are 'significant', with an average lithium oxide content of 1.51%, the spokesperson said.
Legal dispute
Explorer AVZ has said the wider area is “the largest lithium deposit in the world.”
Perth-based AVZ has accused Congo of acting illegally by taking over the full license and then awarding the northern part to a Zijin unit in September 2023. AVZ said arbitration tribunals have ordered Zijin's state partner to halt any move to develop the disputed area. permit area until they have heard the cases. The government is “in flagrant violation of several orders,” an AVZ spokesperson said by email.
AVZ said last month that Australian Federal Police searched its premises over bribery allegations related to the Manono lithium project. The company has denied any wrongdoing.
A 2020 study by AVZ – which aimed to develop the entire Manono deposit – envisaged the construction of a lithium mine that would be dwarfed by only a few giant projects in Australia's No. 1 producer, such as Albemarle Corp.'s Greenbushes. Goulamina in Mali, says Thomas Matthews, battery materials analyst at CRU Group.
