Chinese lithium mine registers wider vein, bolstering Beijing’s battery supply

China has announced the expansion of the resource base for a major lithium deposit in the southwestern province of Sichuan by about 70 per cent, strengthening the country’s potential long-term supply for the metal – an essential component in the production of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage.

After recent detection efforts, the Jiada Lithium Mine has registered about 1.05 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent in the deposit, bringing its total resources to 2.53 million tonnes, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday. The increase reinforces the mine’s status as a major hard-rock lithium deposit.

Dazhong Mining, the project’s developer, said in a filing that the additional resources had passed review and registration by the Ministry of Natural Resources. They comprise 33.52 million tonnes of ore containing about 423,800 tonnes of lithium oxide, with an average grade of 1.26 per cent.

The addition represents a 70.5 per cent increase from the previously registered 1.48 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, according to the filing.

The company estimates that the deposit’s initial mining area, with an approved extraction scale of 2.6 million tonnes of ore a year, could support annual production of about 50,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate at full capacity, though it was still completing procedures to obtain mining and operating permits.

Lithium’s utility in the manufacturing of EVs, energy storage systems and consumer electronics makes access to the metal a strategic concern for China, as its battery and clean-energy firms grow into world leaders.

The country has substantial domestic deposits. In January 2025, the China Geological Survey said exploration breakthroughs had increased China’s share of global lithium reserves to 16.5 per cent, placing it second worldwide by the agency’s estimates.

Yet China remains heavily reliant on overseas supplies, counting on overseas sources for about 60 per cent of its lithium resource supply in 2025, according to a report by the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association.

It imports lithium concentrates from countries including Australia, Zimbabwe and Brazil, while Chile and Argentina are its main sources of imported lithium carbonate.

Jada lies within a lithium belt that stretches across West Kunlun, Songpan and Garze in China’s west, which measures about 2,800km (1,740 miles) and forms part of what Chinese geologists call the “Asian lithium belt”. The region is a major concentration of the country’s hard-rock lithium resources, according to Xinhua.

Wang Denghong, director of the Institute of Mineral Resources at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, was quoted by Xinhua as saying the additional resources would strengthen western Sichuan’s lithium resource base, bolster domestic supply security and “help reduce dependence on foreign sources”.

The expansion follows other major exploration gains. In Sichuan, local authorities announced a breakthrough at the Murong deposit in Yajiang in 2024, identifying about 990,000 tonnes of lithium oxide.

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And in July last year, central China’s Hunan province announced that its Jijiaoshan deposit contained 490 million tonnes of ore holding 1.31 million tonnes of lithium oxide.

Overall, China identified eight new lithium deposits nationwide in 2025, according to a report published by the China Geological Survey.

The expansion comes amid a broader mineral exploration campaign, launched in 2021, to strengthen domestic supplies of energy resources and strategic minerals and improve supply chain security.