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Lohum Expands its Lithium Refining Capabilities with 1000 MT/A Battery-Grade Lithium Facility

March 06, 2025. By News Bureau

Lohum announced the expansion of its lithium refining capabilities with a 1000 MT/A battery-grade Lithium facility. Lohum currently refines more than 90 percent of all lithium in India, making it one of the largest lithium refiners in the world outside of China.

Lohum’s lithium refining operations will shore up India’s energy security and make the nation competitive across global critical minerals, EV, and energy transition markets.

Having grown 20x in the last 4 years, Lohum is not only the largest lithium refiner in India but is also setting up production capabilities for value-added products like Cathode Active Materials (CAM) that go directly into Lithium-ion battery gigafactories. This will make Lohum the largest direct consumer of lithium in India by 2030, by when the world is expected to consume almost 1.5 million tons of lithium carbonate annually for 4000 GWh of cell production, with more than half of this demand coming from outside China.

China leverages and abuses its market dominance by strategically dumping cheap minerals or withholding access to material and technology. In January 2025, China placed restrictions on the export of Lithium refining technology, and also of technology & equipment for the latest generation of LFP battery technology, a Lithium-based product for which China has 95 percent+ of global capacity. Given these developments, India can take the lead in derisking this China-dominated global supply chain.

China's leadership in the field comes from the scale of operations of local refiners, massive domestic consumption, and focus on product purity. Lohum is rapidly closing the gap in all three. India alone is projected to cumulatively need 300,000 tons of lithium carbonate, and Lohum has already built up a global supply chain for spent Lithium-ion battery sourcing, and established MoUs with mine sources to ensure adequate supply to meet India's growing lithium needs.

Lohum’s Lithium refining operations are also globally competitive w.r.t. cost, with CapEx and OpEx in line with the best Chinese refiners, and as low as one-third to one-fifth of US or EU-based refiners.

The company is well-positioned to strengthen India's position in the global critical minerals landscape, both by serving India’s needs and by establishing India as a leading global supplier of critical minerals, working under the ambit of the Government of India's National Critical Minerals Mission – an INR 34,000 crore Mission announced in Budget 2025 to support exploration, processing and R&D in critical minerals.

Rajat Verma, Founder & CEO of Lohum Corporation, said, "Lohum's lithium refining leadership, coupled with our growing capabilities in value-added products like Cathode Active Materials, positions us as a key partner in building a Viksit and Atmanirbhar Bharat. We are sustainably producing globally competitive critical mineral products at low CapEx and OpEx, thereby reducing India's reliance on Chinese lithium imports."

The company's lithium refining capabilities, with current recovery rates of 90 percent+ (the industry average is 60-70 percent) and purity of 99.8 percent+, slated to reach 99.99% shortly on the back of R&D breakthroughs. This has been enabled by Lohum's pioneering 100-member R&D team, with over 50 patent claims around lithium and 100+ patent claims across different critical minerals reuse, recycling and refining technologies.

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Energy Storage

Lohum

Lithium Refining Capabilities

Battery-Grade Lithium Facility

Energy transition

lithium in India

Lithium refiners

Lithium-ion battery gigafactories