[miningmx.com] — Zambia’s Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), a unit of London-listed Vedanta Resources Plc, has launched a copper reclamation project that will add 24,000 tonnes to the company’s annual output, it said on Thursday.
The Times of Zambia quoted KCM’s director of operations Jeya Kumar as saying Konkola expected to produce 2,000 tonnes of finished copper per month from the slug dump in Chingola in the mineral-rich Copperbelt, about 322 km north-west of Lusaka.
Kumar, who spoke during the launch of the $10 million project, said KCM had employed 100 workers at the dump, the second such reclamation operation. The first is expected to be closed after two years.
“This is the cheapest form of extracting copper and this project has a life span of 15 years. We feel this is one of the ways of sustaining production,” Kumar said.
Without giving a timeframe, Kumar said KCM, the southern African country’s largest copper producer, also planned to restart operations at its Fitwaola mine which was closed last year when copper prices fell.
Kumar said KCM was steadily picking up from the effects of the global financial crisis, which forced some mining companies in Zambia to scale down operations and others to suspend output.
“When the Fitwaola mine is reopened we shall create more jobs because we are looking at engaging 300 employees to work there,” Kumar said.
KCM plans to more than double output to 305,000 tonnes of copper cathode in 2009 after launching a new business plan.
Konkola’s 305,000 tonnes planned output for this year is much larger than around 140,000 tonnes of copper produced in 2008 and is almost half of Zambia’s total projected copper production of 664,000 tonnes in 2009.
The mining company also planned to restart cobalt production, which it stopped several years ago, with cobalt output planned at 5,000 tonnes per year.
KCM, which operates the Nchanga smelter, Nchanga open pit, Konkola copper mines and the satellite Fitwaola mine, is developing the Konkola Deep Copper Project (KMDP), touted as Africa’s deepest copper mine.
