Most of the lithium mined in Zimbabwe — and in Australia, the world’s largest producer — doesn’t come from salt flat brines like the lithium mined in Chile or Argentina. It comes from hard rock, in the form of a mineral called spodumene.
Spodumene is a lithium aluminum silicate mineral. In its raw form, mined ore typically contains only a small percentage of lithium oxide, so it has to be crushed, concentrated, and upgraded before it’s useful. That first step produces what the industry calls spodumene concentrate — usually referred to by its lithium oxide content, such as “6% spodumene concentrate.” Historically, this concentrate has been Zimbabwe’s primary lithium export.
Getting from spodumene concentrate to a battery-ready chemical takes another step: conversion. The concentrate is processed — typically through roasting and leaching — into lithium sulphate, which can then be further refined into lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, the forms battery manufacturers actually use in cathode production.
Each step up this chain adds value. Industry estimates put processed lithium sulphate at roughly 4x the price of raw concentrate, and battery-grade carbonate at closer to 5x. That pricing gap is the economic logic behind Zimbabwe’s 2026 push to require in-country processing rather than allowing raw concentrate exports — it’s an attempt to capture more of that value onshore instead of exporting the upgrade opportunity along with the ore.
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