Sinomine Resource Group: Subsidiary’s Two High-Purity Lithium Chemicals Production Lines Resume Production

According to Roll Call and other U.S. congressional media outlets on August 10, President Trump held a roundtable meeting with about 200 mining industry officials at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on August 7 local time to discuss ways to strengthen the U.S. critical minerals supply chain. During the meeting, Secretary Lutnick directly mentioned Korea Zinc’s USD 7.4 billion U.S. critical minerals smelter project as a key example of supply chain investment by the U.S. government, emphasizing the need for cooperation with allied countries.

[Black Mass Imports: Policy Channel Open, Yet Market Circulation Still Faces Multiple Bottlenecks] On June 1, 2025, a joint announcement by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the General Administration of Customs officially took effect, removing compliant waste lithium-ion battery powder from the Catalogue of Solid Wastes Forbidden from Import and subjecting it to import management as ordinary goods. This marked a long-awaited policy breakthrough for China’s lithium battery recycling industry—prior to this, the channel for raw materials from outside China had never been legally accessible, and the industry relied almost entirely on domestically retired power batteries and off-cuts from battery factories.