DRC’s top coltan miner resumes purchases of ore

Societe Miniere de Bisunzu (SMB), the biggest coltan miner in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), resumed purchases of the ore after a threemonth shutdown at one of the country’s largest deposits.

Output restarted at SMB’s mining permit, comprising seven sites at Rubaya in east DRC, on August 14 and the company began buying the minerals extracted by artisanal diggers on Tuesday, Freddy Nzonga, the company’s director of traceability, said by phone.

Production was halted in May following allegations of smuggling and attacks by miners against SMB officials. “The diggers returned to the sites last month,” Nzonga said. Production is “still quite modest,” he said.

The DRC produces more than a quarter of the world’s tantalum, the scarce mineral that is extracted from coltan ore and used in Apple iPhones and other smartphones as well as armaments and aviation components. In 2017, SMB purchased about 1,000 tons of coltan ore extracted from its permit area. That’s about half of DRC’s total production, mines ministry data shows.

SMB is controlled by the family of Congolese senator Edouard Mwangachuchu.

Its sites at Rubaya were declared “green” by mines minister Martin Kabwelulu in March 2012, among the first in the DRC to qualify as mines that do not fund armed conflict in a region blighted by more than two decades of militia violence.

Coltan produced there is tagged under a mineral-tracing system run by the UK-based International Tin Association. SMB’s licence is for industrialised mining, but in order to end a lengthy dispute with locals, in 2013 it signed an accord with the Co-operamma co-operative permitting its members to dig the ore from SMB’s permit areas as long as they sold it to SMB.

SMB halted activity at its Rubaya sites — one is mechanised, while the others are exploited manually by Co-operamma — because of a “breakdown” in its agreement with the miners. The 102-day suspension was the result of “recurrent participation by Co-operamma members in fraud” and the cooperative’s refusal to implement upgraded traceability mechanisms, according to a May 2 letter the company sent to Anselme Kitakya, the provincial minister of mines.