Commodities
Zijin Wants Its Africa Copper Mine to Rival the World’s Biggest
- Chinese miner targets further expansion at JV with Ivanhoe
- Ramp-up would see Kamoa-Kakula vie with BHP’s Escondida
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China’s Zijin Mining Group Co. is considering an expansion of its jointly-owned copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo that would place it among the world’s biggest single sources of the metal.
Zijin would like to scale up the massive Kamoa-Kakula mine in the African copper belt to 1 million tons a year, Chairman Chen Jinghe said in an interview. That’s well beyond the existing target of about 600,000 tons, and would mean a challenge in scale to BHP Group Ltd.’s ageing Escondida mine in Chile.