Chinese firm to invest $147m in copper project in DRC

BEIJING - China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co will invest $147.2 million to build a copper project in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as it extends the exploration of its mining assets in the country, the company said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange on Tuesday.

The project will be located in the Lukuni region in the south of DRC, and will have annual electro-deposited copper production capacity of 30, 000 tonnes.

Electro-deposited copper is a raw material widely used in the electrical equipment and machine manufacturing sectors.

Huayou has built two cobalt refineries in the Luiswishi region of DRC after buying copper-cobalt mineral rights from La Generale des Carrieres et des Mines in 2015.

The new copper project is expected to launch by September 2019, the company said in the filing, but it also warned it still needs approvals from Chinese authorities.

The investment will be made through its subsidiary Congo DongFang International Mining (CDM), which mainly sources copper and cobalt from DRC.