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The Construction of Kakula’s Phase 1 Processing Plant has Completed 90%
2021/04/08 5084

Zijin News - The construction of Kakula’s Phase 1 3.8Mtpa processing plant has completed 90% and is expected to complete by the end of June 2021. Phase 1 processing plant is scheduled to start production in July 2021. The construction of phase 2 3.8Mtpa processing plant has also progressed well. Kamoa-Kakula project has mined 400,000 tonnes of ore grading 5.36% copper in March which brings the total of ores contained by surface stockpiles to 2.56M tonnes with an average grade of 4.6%.

Kamoa-Kakula has more than 43.69 Million tonnes of copper resources. The average feed grade is over 6% which makes it become the highest grade copper mine in the world. The designed processing capacity is 3.8Mtpa in the first year and will increase to 7.6Mtpa in third quarter 2022 with annual production of 400 Thousands tonnes of copper.

Given the current copper price environment, Zijin and Ivanhoe are exploring the acceleration of the Kamoa-Kakula Phase 3 concentrator expansion from 7.6Mtpa to 11.4Mtpa, which would bring annual copper production to 530,000 tonnes.

Kamoa-Kakula is nearing completion of agreements with respect to the sale of its copper concentrates during Phase 1 operations. Kakula is expected to produce an extremely high-grade, clean copper concentrate (containing over 55% copper) containing extremely low arsenic levels by world standards – approximately 0.01% that will be highly coveted by smelters around the world.

Clean and renewable hydropower will be used for the project. A 2020 independent audit of Kamoa-Kakula's greenhouse gas intensity metrics performed by Hatch Ltd. of Mississauga, Canada, confirmed that the project will be among the world's lowest greenhouse gas emitters per unit of copper produced.