Congo's mineral-rich Katanga province has lifted a ban on exporting copper ore to Zambia, First Quantum Minerals Ltd said on Wednesday. "As of midday yesterday, First Quantum's Lonshi mine in the DRC has resumed trucking ore across the border to the company's processing plant in Zambia," a spokeswoman told Reuters.
The shipments were the result of a ban being lifted by the authorities, she added. On March 3, Governor Moise Katumbi closed the province's border with neighbouring Zambia to trucks transporting raw copper and cobalt ore, seeking to force mining companies to produce value-added processed products inside Katanga.
Later in the month, Katumbi lifted a ban on the export of processed copper to Zambia but maintained a prohibition on shipping ore, mining and transport executives said.
First Quantum's Lonshi mine is located around 35 km east of the firm's Bwana Mkubwa processing facility in Zambia. The operation produced 51,068 tonnes of copper cathode last year.
Following the end of a 1998-2003 war and Congo's first free elections in more than four decades last year - won by incumbent President Joseph Kabila - foreign investment has been picking up and firms are moving to dig new mines or restart old ones.
The Democratic Republic of Congo tumbled from being the world's fifth biggest copper producer in the 1980s at over 500,000 tonnes a year to only about 33,000 tonnes in 2000. But mine production is due to jump by 83 percent this year to 139,500 tonnes, according to Reuters Metal Production Database (MPD).
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