Southern Africa Lithium: DMS Before Everything Else

From Bikita to Karibib, the African lithium belt is pegmatite country — and pegmatites are where dense media separation earns its keep before a single flotation cell is built.

The belt

Zimbabwe's Bikita, Arcadia and Zulu projects and Namibia's Karibib district host coarse-crystalline spodumene and petalite in quartz-feldspar hosts — a textbook density-contrast system (3.15 vs ≈2.6 g/cm³). Most producing hard-rock lithium operations worldwide lead with DMS for exactly this reason: the tonnage decision happens at crusher sizes.

Proven on pegmatite ore

Our Tajik spodumene campaign upgraded 0.91% Li₂O to a 4.08% concentrate with a 0.96% middlings stream — 91.9% of lithium DMS-recoverable across both — leaving only a light flotation polish to reach chemical grade. The same three-product architecture transfers directly to Zimbabwean and Namibian ores.

Water reality

Namibian sites are water-capped by permit and by climate. Our circuit runs at 0.1 m³/t fully recirculated, and the coarse fraction can go through XRT dry sorting with zero process water — a flowsheet designed for exactly this constraint.