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Zimbabwe has introduced a new freight rail option for transporting lithium concentrate to Mozambique’s Port of Maputo, offering miners a cheaper and more efficient alternative to road transport as the country seeks to strengthen its position in the global battery minerals market.
The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) said it has partnered with Beitbridge Bulawayo Railway (BBR), a unit of South Africa’s Grindrod, and Zimbabwean logistics company Silvergill to move the first 1,000 metric tonnes of lithium concentrate from Tsingshan Holding Group’s Gwanda Lithium Mine to Maputo by rail.
Under the arrangement, the shipment will travel about 180 kilometres on BBR’s railway between Gwanda and Beitbridge before continuing on NRZ’s 300-kilometre line to the Chicualacuala border with Mozambique. From there, the cargo will use the 522-kilometre Limpopo rail line to Maputo, creating a rail corridor of roughly 1,000 kilometres.
The new service is expected to reduce transport costs and ease congestion associated with trucking lithium concentrate to port, which has long been the dominant export route despite logistical bottlenecks.
Zimbabwe, Africa’s largest lithium producer, exported 1.13 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate to China in 2025, accounting for about 15% of China’s lithium concentrate imports that year.
The country’s rail network has struggled with years of underinvestment, with freight volumes falling from 12 million tonnes in the 1990s to just 2 million tonnes in 2025. NRZ has increasingly relied on partnerships with private logistics companies to revive freight operations.
Most of Zimbabwe’s lithium mines are located along a west-south-east rail corridor linking the country to Mozambique, providing a strategic export route to China, the world’s largest processor of lithium.
Chinese companies dominate Zimbabwe’s lithium industry after investing an estimated $2 billion in mines and processing plants since 2021. Major investors include Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sinomine, Sichuan Yahua, Chengxin Lithium, and Tsingshan Holding Group.
As Zimbabwe pushes for more value addition through domestic processing, producers expect exports of lithium sulphate, an intermediate chemical used in battery production, to rise to 344,000 tonnes by 2030
Source:Reuters
Reporter:Nelson Banya
Editing:Tomasz Janowaki