ZCCM Investments Holdings (LSE:ZCC), the Zambian investment holding company, has given shareholder approval to a new Tailings Leach Plant at Konkola Copper Mines, in which it holds a 20.6% stake.
Konkola Copper Mines followed up on 17 September by signing a $498 million engineering, procurement and construction agreement with China NERIN Engineering Company to build the facility.
The plant will reprocess tailings from the TD5 dam at Nchanga, a secondary resource estimated at 546 million tonnes grading 0.54% copper, producing roughly 70,000 tonnes a year of LME Grade A copper cathode at full capacity using solvent extraction and electrowinning technology, with no new mining required.
The project sits outside Vedanta Resources' initial $1 billion investment programme for Konkola Copper Mines and will be funded by the mine itself, with its equity contribution met from internally generated resources rather than any capital call on ZCCM-IH.
Studies point to a commercial recovery rate of 74%, with the plant designed to process 53,500 tonnes of tailings a day, or 17.7 million tonnes a year.
China NERIN will deliver the plant on a turnkey basis, building on its earlier design work, and will support commissioning, performance testing and training, with implementation expected to take 24 months and full capacity reached from the fourth year of operation.
"Nchanga's tailings are one of the largest secondary copper resources in Africa. Using the latest technology, this plant turns them into around 70,000 tonnes of LME Grade A cathode a year without mining a single new tonne of ore," said ZCCM-IH chief executive Kakenenwa Muyangwa.
The project adds to Zambia's push toward 3 million tonnes of annual copper output by 2031 and supports Konkola Copper Mines' own ambition of reaching 300,000 tonnes a year.
The approval follows ZCCM-IH's interim results for the half-year ended 30 June, in which the company flagged ongoing operational reforms and production ramp-ups across its major copper investees, including Konkola Copper Mines, as central to its medium-term strategy.