Zimbabwe’s state-owned railway company said on Tuesday its\u00a0collaboration\u00a0with private operators now provides capacity to haul lithium concentrate to Maputo port in \u200bMozambique by rail, expanding logistics options for the battery mineral.<\/p>\n
Africa’s top \u200clithium producer Zimbabwe mostly trucks the bulk mineral to port, a more expensive option fraught with logistical bottlenecks.<\/p>\n
The National Railways of Zimbabwe said in a statement it had partnered \u200bwith Beitbridge Bulawayo Railway (BBR), a unit of South Africa’s Grindrod, and \u200bZimbabwean logistics firm Silvergill to send the first 1,000 metric \u2060tons of lithium concentrate from Tsingshan Holding Group’s Gwanda Lithium Mine to \u200bMaputo.<\/p>\n
The first 180 km (112 miles) stretch of the consignment would be on BBR’s \u200btrack between Gwanda and Beitbridge, the NRZ said. The NRZ’s 300 km line then connects Beitbridge and the Chicualacuala border post with Mozambique, the railway said.<\/p>\n
The Limpopo line, which \u200bconnects Chicualacuala and Maputo, is about 522 km, making the rail leg \u200bfrom Gwanda to port about 1,000 km long.<\/p>\n
The NRZ has struggled for years due to \u200cunder-investment \u2060by the government and has stepped up collaborations with private logistics firms to boost freight volumes which collapsed from a peak of 12 million tons in the 1990s, to 2 million tons in 2025.<\/p>\n
Most of Zimbabwe’s lithium mines \u200bare along a west-south-east \u200brail corridor \u2060leading to Mozambique, from where the minerals are shipped to China.<\/p>\n
Chinese miners, including Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine, Sichuan Yahua, \u200bChengxin Lithium\u00a0and Tsingshan dominate Zimbabwe’s lithium sector after investing \u200babout $2 billion \u2060in mines and plants since 2021.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe exported 1.13 million tons of lithium-bearing spodumene concentrate to China in 2025, accounting for about 15% of its lithium concentrate \u2060imports \u200bfor the year.<\/p>\n
With Zimbabwe demanding more\u00a0local processing, producers \u200bforecast exports of lithium sulphate \u2014 a precursor chemical that is processed further to produce battery-grade lithium \u200bchemicals \u2014 to reach 344,000 tons by 2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe’s state-owned railway company said on Tuesday its\u00a0collaboration\u00a0with private operators now provides capacity to haul lithium concentrate to Maputo port in \u200bMozambique by rail, expanding logistics options for the battery mineral. Africa’s top \u200clithium producer Zimbabwe mostly trucks the bulk mineral to port, a more expensive option fraught with logistical bottlenecks. The National Railways of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,3028,30],"tags":[71,76],"class_list":["post-21525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-mining","category-southern-africa","tag-mozambique","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21527,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21525\/revisions\/21527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}