After four years, the Tibet Mining 10,000-ton lithium carbonate project was officially put into production

The Zabuye Salt Lake 10,000-ton lithium carbonate project, which lasted four years in Tibet Mining, was officially launched. According to the company's announcement on the 25th, after full efforts, the project successfully completed a 120-hour functional assessment from September 20 to 24, 2025, marking the official start of production of the project. Some industry analysts believe that the release of production capacity of this project will significantly increase the self-sufficiency rate of domestic lithium resources.

According to Tibet Mining, the Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet, which has exclusive mining rights, is the third largest lithium mineral salt lake in the world and the largest in Asia. It is a special comprehensive large salt lake deposit rich in lithium, boron, potassium, and solid and liquid coexist.

According to data, the lithium content concentration of the Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet is second only to the Atacama Salt Lake in Chile. It ranks second in the world in lithium-containing grades. It has the world's unique solid resources of natural lithium carbonate and the characteristics of high lithium magnesium-poor and lithium carbonate rich. The brine has approached or reached the saturation point of lithium carbonate, and is prone to different forms of natural lithium carbonate deposition, so it has better resources than similar salt lakes in the world.

In August 2021, Tibet Mining disclosed its first plan for the green comprehensive development and utilization of 10,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate project in Zabuye Salt Lake in Tibet. In the initial plan, the company said it strives to be completed on July 30, 2023 and put into production on September 30, 2023.

When will the Zabuye Salt Lake be fully developed and utilized has attracted market attention. According to the plan, the project designs annually to produce 9,600 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate, 2,400 tons of industrial-grade lithium carbonate, 156,000 tons of potassium chloride, and 200 tons of rubidium-cesium mixed salt.

However, due to the harsh natural environment of the project construction site, the extreme cold plateau and the impact of environmental protection problems, as well as the fluctuations in the market price of lithium carbonate, the progress of the project was lower than expected.

According to the subsequent disclosure progress, the project officially started construction in June 2022, the machinery was completed on November 20, 2023, and trial production began on June 30, 2024. The construction of supporting energy facilities is still underway.

According to the company's disclosure on the 25th, the project is a large industrial device and is the world's first project to adopt membrane separation + MVR salt lake lithium extraction technology. It involves relatively complex technical debugging, environmental adaptation and product verification. It is also located in a high-altitude and faces arduous construction conditions.

According to the 2024 financial report, Tibet Mining Holdings subsidiary Zhabuye Lithium High-tech Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Tibet Mining, had a net profit loss of 10.0161 million yuan that year, a year-on-year decrease of 104.93%, mainly due to the impact of weak terminal consumption demand, the price of lithium salt products fell sharply year-on-year, resulting in a significant decline in net profit during the reporting period.

According to data released by Shanghai Ganglian, the current average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate is 73,250 yuan/ton. Compared with ore lithium extraction, the core competitiveness of salt lake lithium extraction lies in its extremely low cash cost, and China's salt lake lithium resource reserves are abundant, and it is expected to get rid of its dependence on imported spodumene. Tibet Mining previously disclosed that the process design of the second phase project is mainly based on the extraction of lithium carbonate and supplemented by potassium chloride, with a total cost of 42,500 yuan/ton, and the total cost after deducting by-products is 24,100 yuan/ton.

The reprinted content comes from the Internet, with the purpose of conveying more information and facilitating learning and communication. If there is any inappropriateness, please contact us to delete it.