In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the end of the Kamoa-Kakula blister copper smelter plant construction project in Lualaba province is being prepared and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024.
This new factory will be, upon its commissioning, the largest foundry in Africa, with a capacity of 500,000 tonnes of 99% pure blister anode copper per year.
For its construction, around 26,000 tons of steel used and around 73,000 other tons of equipment.
The largest copper smelter in Africa
During an evaluation in 2023, the managers of Ivanhoe Mines Robert Friedland and Marna Cloete, respectively Co-Executive President and President, indicated that this new smelter will be the largest in Africa.
“The new direct-to-blister flash copper smelter is expected to be one of the largest single-line flash copper smelters in the world and the largest in Africa. The foundry will have a nameplate production capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year of more than 99% pure blister copper anodes,” Robert Friedland and Marna Cloete announced.
Indeed, Turbine No. 5 is expected to provide an additional 178 megawatts of clean hydroelectric power to the national grid, which is enough to meet the electricity needs of the Phase 3 concentrator, the smelter, as well as to provide spare capacity for the DRC network and future expansions.
The 100 hectare smelter complex is being constructed alongside the operational Phase 1 and 2 concentration plants. The smelter has been designed to incorporate cutting-edge direct-to-blister technology supplied by Metso Outotec of Espoo, Finland, and will meet meets International Finance Corporation (IFC) emissions standards.
It will have dry concentrate feed processing capacity and is designed to operate on a mix of concentrate produced from the adjacent Phase 1 and 2 concentrators at Kakula as well as the Phase 3 and future Phase 4 concentrators at Kamoa, located approximately 10 kilometers away.
According to the assessment carried out by Skarn Associates and WSP Group, the smelter will have one of the lowest Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission intensities in the world. Of the approximately 100 copper smelters analyzed worldwide, the smelter is estimated to rank the fourth lowest in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
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