UK-listed Copper Resources Corporation will start production at a 54,000 tonne-per-year mine in the DRC next year after signing a loan agreement, the company said on Friday.
CRC accepted a $32 million deal on Friday with RMB Resources of South Africa, Mitch Allard, Executive Vice Chairman of Copper Resources Corporation, said after returning from a visit to Congo earlier this week.
"On the mining side there are some very attractive properties in the DRC. We have a 5.1 percent-grade copper mine at Kinsenda," Allard said in an interview.
Allard said the break-even copper price for Kinsenda was 68 cents/lb.
"Of that, 28 cents is the mining and processing costs. The other 40 cents is for transport costs."
The project cost is estimated at $48 million.
Congo, which produced over half a million tonnes of copper annually in the mid 1970s, is seen by many as a vast untapped resource that could help ease shortages of the metal that hit a record high of $8,800 a tonne ($4/lb) on the London Metal Exchange in May.
But output fell to 60,000 tonnes of copper in 1998-1999 when the country fell into a civil war which killed an estimated 4 million people.
A peace deal to end fighting drew the main factions into an interim government under President Joseph Kabila, who is the favourite to win the first multi-party elections in 45 years in a July 30 election.
Allard said he believed the Congolese people would not allow the country to descend into war again and squander the chance to benefit from its huge mineral wealth.
"There are no opinion polls so it is difficult to prognosticate about the elections, but what impressed me, speaking to people at every level of Congolese society, is the belief that it will work out."
"Whether Kabila wins, no one knows...but people don't generally think he will lose. The people have been through a horrible situation and nobody wants to see a return to the old days."
However, a think-tank said on Friday the elections risk plunging the country back into conflict by creating a class of angry rebels and politicians stripped of lucrative government jobs.
Allard said the mining industry was seen as an economic life line for the country.
"We will be employing about 1,000 people and we are a small operation. Others will be employing more."