Lohum intends to build 30,000 tonnes of annual lithium carbonate refining capacity in India, founder and CEO Rajat Verma told Nikkei Asia. That's roughly the appetite of a serious cathode sector — and it would be fed by an Indian company's first overseas lithium mine.

The Delhi-area critical minerals producer, founded in 2018 as a battery recycler, opened mining operations in Zimbabwe and plans to ship that feedstock home for final processing. The goal is an integrated, India-based supply chain for EV batteries, with cost structures Verma says can match Chinese refining.

What does the $100m buy?

Lohum will allocate $100 million over the next 12 to 18 months to build an ore-processing plant in Zimbabwe. The facility will convert mined ore into lithium sulphate before export — a nod to Zimbabwe's restrictions on shipping raw ore out of the country. India then does the final conversion into battery-grade lithium carbonate.

In short: dig in Africa, do first-stage processing there because Harare demands it, refine at home.

Verma expects the domestic refining operations to reach full capacity within three years. Note the tense — this is a plan on a stated timeline, not commissioned capacity. Trade readers will want production data before treating the 30,000t figure as firm.

Why India wants its own refining

According to GlobalData, parent of Just Auto, India imports more than 80% of its critical mineral requirements. That leaves the country's EV battery build-out structurally exposed. The analysis firm says China's refining dominance creates supply, price and geopolitical risks, pushing India toward diversified sourcing, battery recycling and domestic capacity.

For context: importing four-fifths of your critical minerals is a fragile position for any country hoping to scale EV production past a million units a year. India's EV ambitions and its import dependence currently point in opposite directions.

Where does the lithium go?

Most of the refined output has a designated customer already — Lohum itself. The lithium carbonate will mainly supply the company's planned 20,000-tonne cathode materials plant, a Rs20bn ($210.8m) facility built specifically for nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistries.

Verma projects NMC will account for 30% to 35% of India's EV battery sector, with export demand in the US matching domestic offtake. Any surplus lithium carbonate goes to third-party cathode manufacturers.

The nickel question

Cathode roadmaps need nickel, and Lohum isn't waiting for the market to provide it. The group is assessing early-stage nickel mining assets in Indonesia and the Philippines to supplement the 1,000 tonnes of secondary nickel it currently recovers each year in Gujarat.

A thousand tonnes a year won't feed a 20,000t NMC cathode plant. That arithmetic explains the Southeast Asian scouting trip on its own.

The company is targeting revenue of Rs100bn by 2029 — roughly $1.05 billion at current rates — up from a recycling base it started nine years ago.

What to watch

Three checkpoints will tell us whether this is a supply chain or a press release: commissioning of the Zimbabwe lithium sulphate plant within the stated 18-month window, ground-breaking on the Indian refining sites, and offtake agreements — internal or third-party — for the cathode plant's 20,000t output. Verma's three-year full-capacity clock starts now.