DRC: Zijin approves USD 769 million investment in copper smelter
Zijin Mining announced Tuesday that its board of directors has approved a $ 769 million smelter investment for its Kamoa-Kakula copper project alongside Ivanhoe Mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The company will reduce the partners’ reliance on third-party smelters to process their ore and make blister, a partially purified form of copper.
The 500,000-ton-per-year direct smelter will be Africa’s largest copper smelter and one of the world’s largest single-line smelters, Ivanhoe said last week when announcing the award of the basic engineering contract to China Nerin Engineering Co.
The $ 769 million, including $ 699 million for construction, will come from the Kamoa-Kamula (JV) joint venture’s own cash flow, Zijin said in a filing.
Known as Kamoa Copper, Ivanhoe and Zijin will each hold 39.6%, the DRC government 20% and Crystal River Global Limited 0.8%. Construction of the plant is expected to take three years, Zijin added.
About 35% of Kamoa-Kakula’s current copper concentrate production, which began production in May, is processed at the nearby Lualaba smelter, majority-owned by China Nonferrous Mining Corp Ltd (CNMC), while the rest is transported to international foundries.
The first phase of Kamoa-Kamula is expected to produce around 200,000 tonnes of copper per year, while the extension of Phase 2 to 400,000 tonnes per year is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022, Ivanhoe said last week.
The Canada-based company says Kamoa-Kakula has the potential to reach a peak annual copper production of over 800,000 tonnes, which would make it the second-largest copper mining complex in the world, after the mine at Escondida in Chile.
