MINING

Steven Din , the company ’ s CEO . “ Many other operations in Zambia don ’ t take production all the way from the mine to the finished product .” This was Vedanta ’ s vision when in November 2004 , it became the majority shareholder in KCM , increasing its share to nearly 80 percent in 2008 . Over this period , Vedanta invested close to $ 3 billion , with part of the financing raised by KCM to realise that vision , installing assets that included a state of the art smelter with a capacity of 311,000 tonnes per annum ( tpa ) and t hree concentrators ( two at the Nchanga mine in Chingola and one at Konkola mine in Chililabombwe ) with a combined concentrating capacity of 15.5 million tonnes .

When Steven Din took over the leadership of the mine in May 2014 , he faced a much changed market for the mine ’ s products . It ’ s well known that there had been a slump in world copper prices , and that many projects were stalled or mothballed . However that is a short-term situation , and with the big investments out of the way , KCM was much better placed than most of its peers .

Din took the long view . “ We are building our vision for the next 50-100 years around the Konkola ore body .” With the open pit at Nchanga virtually mined out , the bold decision was made to go below with the objective of expanding the production of copper ore at the Konkola mine from two million tonnes per annum to 7.5 million tonnes per annum by accessing the rich ore body that lies below . To achieve this the company sank

www . kcm . co . zm 41