Zimbabwe rejects lithium export ban delay request

Mines Minister Polite Kambamura rejected a formal industry request to postpone the lithium concentrate export ban beyond January 1. Kambamura told reporters at a mine site on Friday that the government will not defer the moratorium, which miners wanted delayed until at least March. Mining companies argued that processing facilities remain incomplete, making the immediate ban a threat to production targets and revenue projections. The Chamber of Mines warned that the timeline forces operators to stockpile concentrate without the domestic capacity to process it. The core vulnerability of the beneficiation strategy rests on the gap between policy deadlines and operational readiness of local processing plants.