Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines announced on Tuesday, the company’s concentrator plant with an annual capacity of 3.8mn mn in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become fully operational.
The mining company began production of copper concentrates at its Kamoa-Kakula project in May.
By June-end; 313,000mt of copper ore with 4.85pc copper was sent to run of mine (ROM) stockpile. Pre-production surface stockpiles are estimated to be 3.4mn mt of a blended average of 4.78pc of copper, the company added.
The copper stockpile was at 162,000mt by the end of May. The plant was operating at full capacity according to its first phase. In the second phase, capacity is expected to reach 7.6mn mt, which will be completed by Q3, 2022.
The company announced that it has delivered 10,500mt of concentrate to the local smelters so far. The copper concentrates extracted at the Kamoa-Kakula mine contain 57pc of copper with low levels of impurities, the company estimates.
The Kamoa-Kakula mines are estimated to produce 80,000-95,000mt of copper concentrate by the end of 2021.
Kamoa-Kakula is a joint venture between Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines and China’s Zijin Mining, with the Government of DRC retaining one-fifth of its control over the project.