Lithium a top Zim Prospect
Trump board full of trophy hunters
LITHIUM. It’s the magic word these days, a headline-catcher which will see Zimbabwe play a major role producing material for tens of millions of batteries for electric cars which will, in eight years, account for 10% of all the world’s vehicles. China will produce 4.5 million electric cars – all needing lithium-ion batteries in the next two years.
Less then 40km from the centre of Harare, under first-class farmland which is at present lush with a soya bean crop, is one of the largest sources of lithium in Africa.
And within a couple of months a new company, Australian Stock Exchange-listed lithium miner, Prospect Resources Limited, will begin the big dig to extract rock which will be crushed, concentrated, roasted and then processed on-site into a high-grade white powder, lithium carbonate. And it will be exported as quick as a flash to markets desperate for more of this complex compound.
Listed in Australia it is, but Prospect Resources is fundamentally a Zimbabwe company, created, dominated and staffed by locals which will produce 25 000 tons a year and annually earn the company at least $300 million until about 2038.
Zimbabwean Harry Greaves is director and headline-maker who successfully brought several of his family’s idle gold deposits in southern Zimbabwe back into full and profitable production in the past decade. He was the star turn at Zimbabwe’s mining indaba in Harare this week, and set the tone for some cautious confidence that its mining sector could be set for recovery and expansion in the next few years on the back of the departure of Robert Mugabe after 37 years in power.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, his successor, brought into the presidency via the military last November, never stops saying, “Zimbabwe is open for business”.
Greaves is excited and elated at the rush of international interest and money to get the Arcadia Lithium Project, Prospect Resources flagship operation, into production. “The first investors were Africans, from Kwazulu-natal and Mauritius. And we expect to staff the whole project with Zimbabweans.”
Since the early days of this project – less then two years ago – the company has aggressively drilled and evaluated the Arcadia site. Greaves went marketing it, first to Australia, and from there “with a fixer” to find Chinese investors and technical information.
And he is recruiting. Mostly in Zimbabwe, and unusually the advert for professional staff says: “Candidates should be fit and able but there is NO limit on age of those who should apply. If you are 70 years old, and can do the job we will welcome your experience and provide you with junior engineers to mentor and handle the admin.”
The geologist who owned the claim is also Zimbabwean, Paul Chimbodza, who has joined the company and is elated at the pace at which it is all moving forward.
“I am a Zimbabwe geologist, and I started exploring for and putting together various mineral assets from 1996. We moved ahead and decided we wanted minerals of the future and for niche markets. Arcadia had, of course, been mined before. The UK Atomic Energy Authority extensively explored for beryl (mineral) in Zimbabwe, including the Arcadia deposit which was subsequently mined by a few other players,” Chimbodza said.
Zimbabwe’s new mines minister, Winston Chitando, said at the indaba: “We believe we have the potential to actually account for 20% of global demand when all known lithium resources are being exploited.” He said he expects Zimbabwe to produce 10% of the world’s lithium within four years.
Good news, not least because the price of the compound has doubled in the last two years.
Hugh Warner, Australian chairperson of the company, said Prospect will produce “high-grade, battery-quality lithium carbonate that exceeds industry norms”.
“This entire process has been designed and built in-country using local skills and services, further demonstrating the business-friendly environment that Zimbabwe is rapidly becoming,” Warner said. WASHINGTON: Big-game hunters tapped by the Trump administration to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants and lions as trophies defended the practice on Friday.
The International Wildlife Conservation Council held its first meeting. It argued that threatened and endangered species would go extinct without the anti-poaching programmes funded in part by the fees wealthy Americans pay to shoot some of them.
The advisory council appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is stuffed with celebrity hunting guides, representatives from rifle and bow manufacturers and wealthy sports people who boast of bagging the coveted “Big Five” – elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo.
One appointee also co-owns a private New York hunting preserve with President Donald Trump’s adult sons.
Retired Oklahoma congressman Bill Brewster was unanimously selected as the board’s chairperson. He said the fees and other costs paid by foreign hunters in African countries are essential to funding anti-poaching programmes.
“As long as an animal has value, it will exist,” Brewster said. “Most of us in this room enjoy hunting. But first has to come conservation and habitat preservation. Without that, there is no hunting.”
Brewster is a lobbyist who has also served on the boards of Safari Club International and the National Rifle Association, groups that have sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the list of countries from which trophy kills can be legally imported.
An NRA profile lauded Brewster and his wife’s five decades of participation and support for hunting and his purchase of a lifetime NRA membership for his grandson when he was 3 days old.
Also on the board are Safari Club president Paul Babaz, a Morgan Stanley investment adviser from Atlanta, and Erica Rhoad, a lobbyist and former Republican congressional staffer who is the NRA’S director of hunting policy.
Trump has decried big-game hunting as a “horror show” in tweets. But under Zinke, an avid hunter, the Fish and Wildlife Service has quietly moved to reverse Obama-era restrictions on bringing trophies from Africa into the US.
No permits for importing elephant heads, hides or tusks have been issued since a ban was lifted earlier this month.