Zambia's Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is sinking shafts at a new deep-level mine, which together with other projects will more than double finished copper output by 2010, the firm said on Monday.
The new underground mine together with a smelter upgrade and tailings project would lift annual output at Zambia's largest copper producer to 500,000 tonnes in 2010 from the projected 200,000 tonnes this year, KCM communications advisor Samuel Equamo said in an interview.
KCM had started sinking shafts at the Konkola Deep Mining Project (KDMP), which is due to become Zambia's largest single mine operation when it comes on stream in 2010, he said.
"KCM expects to produce 500,000 tonnes of finished copper per year when its key projects, the Konkola Deep Mining Project, the (Nkana) smelter project and the Chingola Refractory Ores project, are fully operational by 2010," Equamo told Reuters in an interview. Equamo said a technology known as heap-leach would be used to process waste from copper mining, which had accumulated for decades at the Chingola Open Pit mine. Equamo said material at one of the KCM tailings dams was running out and the firm would start reclaiming copper from another dam to ramp up output.
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