Zimbabwean company Verify Engineering launches lithium battery manufacturing

Zimbabwean company Verify Engineering has started lithium battery production as Africa's number one lithium-producing nation advances the local value addition of the metal.

State-owned daily The Herald wrote on July 8 that Verify Engineering, wholly owned by the government via the Ministry of Higher Education, plans to manufacture electric vehicle (EV) batteries as well.

It cited the ministry's permanent secretary, Fanuel Tagwira, as saying the firm's plant in Mutare, eastern Zimbabwe, is already producing oxygen for export to neighbouring Mozambique, along with acetylene and liquid nitrogen.

Zimbabwe banned lithium ore exports in December 2022 in an effort to promote local processing of the metal.  Together with a Chinese investor, the country is building a mines-to-energy industrial area. The complex, according to The Herald, will include two 300-megawatt power stations, a coking plant, a lithium salt plant, a graphite processing plant, a nickel-chromium alloy smelter, and a nickel sulphate plant.

Zimbabwe has attracted more than $1bn in investment into lithium mining and processing from Chinese companies including Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Sinomine Resource Group, which are all processing lithium to concentrate stage for further processing in China.