The KOV mine is a large, active

open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...

copper and cobalt mine near

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 has an airport and a railway to Lubumbashi. Just outside of Kolwezi there is the static inverter plant of the ...

Lualaba Province Lualaba Province (''Jimbo la Lualaba'', in Swahili) is a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo created in the 2015 repartitioning when the former Katanga province was split up into four new provinces—Lualaba, Haut-Katanga, Haut- ...

in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

. The site contains some of the highest grade copper ore of any mine in the world. The mine is also one of the world's largest Cobalt producers. It is named after three of the five orebodies which make up the mine: Kamoto-East, Oliveira, and Virgule (the other two being Variante and FNSR). The mine is run by ''Kamoto Copper Company'', a joint venture between

Glencore Glencore plc is an Anglo-Swiss Multinational corporation, multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas headquarters are in London, London, England as well a ...

(75%) and

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 i ...

(25%). The deposits began to be exploited in 1960 by

up until 2000, when operations stopped due to flooding. Dewatering started in 2006, with mine operations restarting in March 2007. In March 2016, one of the walls of the mine collapsed, killing seven employees. During the fourth quarter of 2017, the mine produced 433,169 tons of ore, resulting in 9,459 tons of copper. In 2019, a second collapse at the mine killed at least 41 artisanal miners working at the site. The number of miners killed was later increased to 43 as more bodies were uncovered.

References

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References

See also