A new player has entered Zimbabwe's lithium mining sector: LOHUM, an Indian critical minerals enterprise, has secured rights to 10 spodumene-bearing blocks in Matabeleland South Province, covering approximately 1,100 hectares, and has already shipped its first batch of lithium ore. The company plans to invest about $100 million to build capacity of roughly 30,000 mt/year of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) over the next two to three years. By LOHUM's own estimate, the initial blocks may contain 30 million to 40 million mt of ore, but this is not an independently compliant reserve figure, and the specific coordinates, mining rights numbers, and counterparties have not been disclosed.

What is truly worth noting is not that "India has acquired a mine," but that LOHUM aims to build a new lithium supply chain outside China: mining in Zimbabwe → local beneficiation → local production of lithium sulfate → shipment to India for lithium carbonate production → cathode material → Indian battery, automotive, and energy storage clients. LOHUM is also building a 5,000 mt/year cathode active material (CAM) plant in Uttar Pradesh, India. Behind this move is India's National Critical Minerals Mission approved in 2025, which explicitly incorporates "acquiring overseas critical mineral assets" into its framework, covering the entire industry chain from exploration, mining, beneficiation, and processing to recycling.

But the first hard hurdle LOHUM faces comes in 2027. Zimbabwe's policy on lithium concentrates has been tightening continuously: exports were briefly suspended in February 2026, then resumed in April under a quota management system, with miners required to submit local processing commitments. Starting January 2027, Zimbabwe plans to impose a full ban on lithium concentrate exports, requiring miners to extend into higher value-added segments such as lithium sulfate. Currently, the only operating lithium sulfate plant in the country is Huayou Cobalt's Arcadia project, with an investment of about $400 million, but the Arcadia beneficiation plant has made clear that its existing capacity can only process its own raw material and cannot accept concentrates from third-party mines. This means LOHUM must build its own beneficiation and lithium sulfate processing system within a very short timeframe, or find new cooperative processing capacity.

Chinese players still hold a strong position. Since 2021, Chinese companies have invested approximately $2 billion in lithium mining and processing projects in Zimbabwe. Huayou Cobalt's Arcadia has achieved integration across mining, beneficiation, and lithium sulfate processing; Sinomine Resource Group's Bikita is one of the core operating lithium mines, with a 100,000 mt/year lithium sulfate project under construction; Chengxin Lithium's Sabi Star, Yahua Group's Kamativi, and Tsingshan Group's Gwanda projects have also been established. Gwanda, in particular, is already connected to the roughly 1,000-km Maputo railway export corridor, and the first batch of lithium concentrates was shipped by rail to a Mozambican port in 2026. LOHUM is also located in Matabeleland South Province, and if its mining area is connected to this corridor in the future, competition will extend beyond mining rights to railway capacity, loading and unloading, and port resources.

In the short term, what Chinese investors face is not a replacement of production. LOHUM plans to invest about $100 million, while Chinese investors have already invested about $2 billion, so the two sides are not at the same stage of construction. What is more worth watching is that LOHUM has given the Zimbabwean government a new investment option and a benchmark for comparison: local processing commitments now have a new reference point, competition for mining rights and infrastructure may increase, and in the future it may also bring new demand for beneficiation equipment, chemical engineering, power, water treatment, and logistics.

Zimbabwe is not "choosing between China and India," but rather raising the threshold for all investors. Sources of investment can be more diversified, but more processing, employment, tax revenue, and infrastructure must remain. What is most worth watching next is: the specific coordinates of LOHUM's 10 blocks, the independent resource report, the site selection and EIA for the lithium sulfate plant, project financing, and whether it will connect to the Gwanda–Maputo logistics corridor. Once this information is made public, it will be possible to truly judge whether what India has obtained in Zimbabwe is merely 10 mining areas, or a second lithium supply chain that can actually be operational.