Whoever masters lithium will be able to get ahead of the end of new energy.

In July 2025, the People's Daily published a "major" in which Hunanese invited the "King of Metals" home. 490 million tons of lithium ore were found in Linwu County, Chenzhou City and Jijiaoshan Mine Area, containing 1.31 million tons of lithium oxide, all of which were new additions and all at strategic level.

This is not a luck with one hoe and one shovel. This is the national trump card that Hunan has carried out for two years, relying on life, sweat, technology and tenacity. Once this card is played, it can save hundreds of billions of import bills every year.

The mine has not been fully opened yet, and the industrial chain is already moving. In the past, it relies on imports, but now it relies on itself. China's lithium mines no longer look at others' expressions.

Lithium mines have to rely on their own hills, and the Chinese themselves find their own "strategic trump card".

Do you believe it? Hunanese really took the lithium, the "king of metal" from the back mountain of their home. 490 million tons of ore and 1.31 million tons of lithium oxide rely entirely on the real data produced by hard bars. Why does the People's Daily name and praise it? Because this mine is not a happy event for the local area, it is a turning point for the country. There is hope that the annual import account of 100 billion yuan is erased by itself.

Where is the mine? Tongtianmiao section, Jijiaoshan Mine District, Linwu County, Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. The ore body discovered this time is an altered granite structure, with thick ore veins, stable extension and good continuity, and is suitable for long-term systematic mining.

There is a direction of 1,100 meters, a tendency of 1,500 meters, an average thickness of 87.4 meters, and a maximum thickness of 312 meters; the length of 2 ore body is 1,300 meters, a thickness of 58.7 meters, and an average grade of 0.255%.

1.31 million tons of lithium oxide, equivalent to the size of 13 ordinary large mines. After the state recognizes it, it is directly listed on the strategic resource list. How is this mine important? New energy batteries, energy storage equipment, aerospace, and nuclear industries rely entirely on lithium to support the bottom. The lithium was broken and the entire chain was stopped.

In the past, China's lithium resources depended very heavily on foreign countries, and more than 80% of them depended on imports. In 2022, lithium carbonate soared to 500,000 yuan per ton, and the entire industrial chain was tight. Some people say that Chinese electric vehicles are built on foreign mines.

The Jijiaoshan mine is equivalent to reversing the passive situation of China's lithium resources. It took Hunan Geological Institute two years to find clues from old data and reports, and smelled the possibility of mineralization from a northwest-to-west iron lithium mica quartz vein.

The project will be approved in 2022, the drilling will be formally carried out in 2023, the exploration will be completed in 2024, and the results will be submitted in 2025. The pace is rare in the country.

This mine also has a big gift package. Strategic metals such as rubidium, tungsten, tin, niobium, and tantalum are all accompanied by ores, and it is worth a lot of money to take it out alone. This is a resource card that can leverage the "full chain".

Two years of mountain exploration, this 100 million tons of mine is not driven by digging, but by carrying it

This mine looks like "Jijiao Mountain" on the map, and the geological team members are "Blade Mountain".

You have to go up and investigate, and you can't cut the way without a machete. Hunan Geological Institute Mine Research Institute, for two full years, the entire mining area was drawn from paper and nailed from the map to the rock layer, which was entirely dependent on people carrying equipment and people hiking through mountains.

In 2022, the project will be launched. Hunan Province has issued a special plan for lithium ore exploration, and Jijiaoshan is listed as a long-term target area for lithium ore. According to the data and historical data comparison, technicians found clues of the "Iron Lithium Mica Vein" from the expired census files.

Official drilling was conducted in June 2023. The first batch of drilling rigs were transported up the mountain by a combination of drones and cableways, and hand-pushed chainsaws to open the way. All routes were manually marked, and the main lines were measured by walking. Geological team members carry more than 20 kilograms of equipment every day, and it is common for them to walk seven or eight kilometers in the rain forest.

227 drill holes were drilled in 14 months, with a total of more than 90,000 meters of drilling and more than 40,000 samples were sampled. In order not to damage the mountain structure, it is designed to be a "one-based porous" solution, digging inclined holes, digging shallow wells, and surrounding areas with dense vegetation. The complete set of equipment performs three-dimensional modeling, real-time graph building, real-time inversion, and real-time data submission.

In the summer of 2024, the mining area is in the rainy season. The team members were stationed in the wild and could not return to the base for three days. The power supply depends on the generator, the communication depends on the relay station, and the data storage depends on the two lines of cloud backup + on-site backup.

Hunan uses the integrated system of "sky, sky, earth and wells": remote sensing images, drone surveying and mapping, ground electromagnetics, and underground geophysical exploration. In one set, it can completely outline the three-dimensional skeleton of the entire ore body. The model accuracy is high to the centimeter level, and the error is controlled within five-thousandths.

The project command center has set up a "post-map combat" scheduling system, holding daily meetings every day, making progress weekly, and making monthly results. 24 drilling rigs rotate all day, 10 sampling groups operate alternately, and there were no accidents in 227 drilling wells and zero damage to the equipment.

The sampling data is analyzed in real time in the provincial laboratory, and the lithium oxide content is gradually locked in the interval. The technical team said that every section, every section, and every layer of ore vein is not obtained by machine running maps, but by people stepping in and digging it step by step.

In August 2024, all exploration phases will be completed and a resource assessment report will be submitted. The Hunan Provincial Department of Natural Resources organized an expert group to review that month, and directly classified it as a "super-large mineral land" on the spot.

Resources cannot wait for policies, and the entire Jijiaoshan chain has started

I found the mine, and how to use it, how to transfer it, and how to earn it next.

In September 2024, just after the project submitted phased results, Chenzhou City started the construction of integrated procurement, selection and smelting projects. Tunnels, belts, factories, and transportation lines are all equipped with complete solutions. Don't let mines and others, nor do they let resources get stuck in the mountains.

The main tunnel is 7.3 kilometers long and will be completed in May 2025. The double-layer belt system will be tested in June. The main body of the ore dressing plant has been capped and the equipment has entered the debugging stage. The Chenzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission took the lead in establishing a special team, setting the approval channel to "inclusive and missing + green channel", connecting the first line, and completing the process of the information on the same day.

Hunan Dazhonghe Lithium Mine Company takes the lead in Zhongyou Metallurgical Selection and introduces Hunan Metallurgical Enterprises to build factories. The entire chain is not "to talk about the later after the procurement", but "to build and supply while purchasing". Resources are directly entered into the equipment, and the ore does not leave the mining area, and the ore is dressed out of the city boundary. Repair after use, and the production line is the repair line.

Industry connection is faster. Power battery manufacturers such as CATL and China Innovation Airlines have connected with lithium concentrate procurement, and the preliminary trial supply batches have been priced. It is expected to produce 600,000 tons of lithium concentrate annually, with an annual output value of 18 billion yuan.

Supporting finance opens the way simultaneously. Hunan has established a special lithium mining industry fund, and Linwu County has issued combination policies such as land use guarantee, energy consumption indicators priority, and technical transformation loan interest subsidy. The entire industrial chain is not about mining, but about industrial goals to promote mining development.

More importantly, it is ecology. The project implements the "green mine" standard throughout the project. The surface is not mined or transported, and the entire process is carried out through underground tunnels; heavy metal treatment reaches national first-level standards or above; The vegetation recovery rate has reached 85%, and some areas have initially shown natural coverage effects.

The whole province of Hunan Province takes Jijiaoshan as the core and formulates a plan to drive the development of the new energy industry in the "14th Five-Year Plan". The goal is to form a trillion-level new energy industry system, with resources as the root, technology as the chain, products as the core, and exports as the trend.

The mine in Jijiaoshan is still in the mountains, but Hunan has begun to turn it into a link in the chain.

References:

[China Natural Resources News] Where does lithium come from——Discovery of super-large lithium mines in Jijiaoshan, Linwu, Hunan. Hunan Provincial Institute of Geology. 2025-07-16

【Red Net】 "What" is natural丨The "hot" battle between two summers! Excavation of 490 million tons of lithium ore in Linwu, Chenzhou. Hunan Provincial Institute of Geology.2025-07-10

490 million tons! Hunan explores super-large lithium mines. China Energy Network.2025-07-09

Jijiaoshan Mining Area. Baidu Encyclopedia.2025