Katanga Mining Ltd was a

mining company This is an incomplete alphabetical list of mining companies. A * Adex Mining * Aditya Birla Group * African Rainbow Minerals * Agnico Eagle * Aiteo * Alumina * Anaconda Copper * Anglo American (mining) * Anglo Platinum * AngloGold Ashanti * A ...

operating in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

with its headquarters in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Katanga Mining operated a major mine complex in the Congo's Katanga Province, producing refined

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

. It claimed to have the "potential of becoming Africa's largest copper producer and the world's largest cobalt producer." Katanga Mining formed two joint-venture projects with state-owned

Gécamines La Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines) is a Congolese commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Lubumbashi, in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a state-controlled corporation founded in ...

to develop the mining complex: Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) and DRC Copper and Cobalt Project (DCP).

Assets and ownership

The company was first listed on the

Toronto Stock Exchange The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX; french: Bourse de Toronto) is a stock exchange located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the 10th largest exchange in the world and the third largest in North America based on market capitalization. Based in the ...

in August 1997. In January 2008 Katanga Mining acquired Nikanor plc for $452m. Katanga Mining was purchased by Glencore in 2020 and it was de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

DRC Copper and Cobalt Project

DRC Copper and Cobalt Project (DCP) began mining Tilwezembe, an open-pit copper and cobalt mine, in 2007. In November 2008, Katanga Mining said they had temporarily suspended mining at Tilwezembe and ore processing at the Luilu refinery in

Kolwezi Kolwezi or Kolwesi is the capital city of Lualaba Province in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, west of Likasi. It is home to an airport and a railway to Lubumbashi. Just outside of Kolwezi there is the static inverter plant ...

due to the depressed price of cobalt.

Kamoto Copper Company

Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) owns a large mining complex near

that includes Kamoto mine, Mashamba East, KTE underground mine, Etang South underground mine, KOV mine, and the T17 mine. Ore from these mines is processed at the Kamoto concentrator and the Luilu metallurgical plant. As of 2010 the open pit Kananga Mine was also the property of KCC. The mine was not active. The Dima mines, consisting of Mashamba East, Mashamba West and Dikuluwe mine were originally owned by the state-owned

before majority rights were sold to Katanga Mining and Nikanor in the early 2000s. Following the merger with Nikanor in 2008, Katanga sold Dikuluwe and Mashamba West to Gécamines for $825 million. In February 2017 Glencore purchased nearly all of Gecamines interests in Katanga and the larger Mutanda mine. The smaller Katanga mine is remaining closed during 2015-2017 while new processing facilities are constructed. Prior to 2015 Katanga produced 113,000 tonnes/yr of copper while Mutanda continues to produce over 210,000 tonnes/yr

Incidents

February 2015, an overturned truck spilled 60 cubic metres of sulphuric acid. In January 2018, a dike broke at Kamoto mine, causing a sodium hydrosulphide spill that damaged crops and killed fish. Four hundred and sixty households were affected. Soil contamination had not been cleaned up later in 2018.

Corruption allegations

The release of the

Paradise papers The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsch ...

in 2017 revealed details of the 2008-2009 negotiations between Katanga and the congolese state owned

. Due to an impasse in negotiations, they called in the businessmen Dan Gertler to act as a mediator. Along with an indirect personal stake in the Katanga project, Gertler had a close personal relationship with the Congolese president's top advisor Augustin Katumba Mwanke, and allegedly passed along millions in bribes on behalf of Och Ziff Capital Management. Canada required a $20 million fine from the company in 2019 due to unclear relationship with the Congolese authorities.

References

{{reflist Copper mining companies of Canada Cobalt mining companies Copper mining companies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mining in Katanga Province Non-renewable resource companies established in 1996 1997 establishments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Canadian companies established in 1996 Companies formerly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange 2020 mergers and acquisitions Glencore