Shandong Zhuocheng Expanded Lithium Reagents Into Australia
The chemical supplier aims to deploy flotation technology designed to raise recovery rates at Australian spodumene mines.
Updated on Oct. 1, 2026 in Chemistry
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Shandong Zhuocheng has announced an expansion of its lithium reagent operations into the Australian spodumene market. This development follows pilot tests at international sites that demonstrated improved lithium recovery rates.
Why it matters
The move targets the industry need for higher extraction efficiency and lower reagent consumption as processors face increasingly complex mineral compositions. By replacing traditional collectors, this technology aims to bypass the energy-intensive desliming process.
The Goulamina pilot increased concentrate lithium oxide content from 4.8 per cent to 5.26 per cent. At the Manono project, the process achieved a 5.2 per cent concentrate grade from an ore body averaging 1.3 per cent lithium oxide.
The players
Shandong Zhuocheng
A chemical supplier specializing in flotation reagents with 100,000 tonnes of annual production capacity.
Liu Jianjun
The founder who established the company in 1995.
The details
Shandong Zhuocheng employs a one mine, one product policy that allows for the adjustment of chemical mixtures based on specific ore body composition. The process replaces traditional oleic acid-based collectors—chemical compounds used to selectively bind to mineral particles in a slurry—with tailored reagent mixes. This method eliminates the requirement for desliming, a pre-treatment stage where fine particles are removed from the ore to improve flotation performance.
Timeline
1995: Shandong Zhuocheng was founded by Liu Jianjun.
2005: The company developed specific collectors for lepidolite projects.
2015: The company began developing collectors for the spodumene industry.
October 2026: A feature article regarding the company was published in Australian Mining.
The Tech Race
Shandong Zhuocheng is positioning its proprietary reagent mixes against the traditional oleic acid-based flotation collectors standard in global mineral processing. The firm currently services 90 projects in China and 27 in Africa, and is now scaling spodumene production to enter the Australian market.
Australian spodumene producers will gain access to custom-tailored reagent formulations currently unavailable to local operations. This transition offers the potential for higher yield from existing ore bodies without requiring additional capital-intensive desliming infrastructure.
The takeaway
Shandong Zhuocheng's success hinges on proving its reagent-mix efficiency outside of its established Chinese and African customer base. Stakeholders should watch for the announcement of the first Australian pilot project to verify if the 92 per cent recovery rates hold under local operational conditions.
Further reading
For more on the latest advancements in chemical processing and mineral extraction, see the Chemistry section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Australian Mining.
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