LUSAKA, Sept. 17 — Zambia’s Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) has signed a US$498 million contract with China NERIN Engineering for the development of a new copper tailings leach plant in Chingola, marking a major Chinese engineering project in Zambia’s expanding copper industry.
The planned facility will have capacity to produce about 70,000 tonnes of copper annually by recovering the metal from existing mine tailings, according to KCM.
The company says the facility will be the largest tailings leach plant of its kind in Africa and will operate alongside KCM’s existing tailings processing facility at its Nchanga operations.
The project will use wet-leaching technology to recover valuable metals from existing copper tailings, allowing KCM to extract additional value from material generated through previous mining and processing operations.
Under the contract, China NERIN will undertake design, engineering, procurement, construction and installation, while also providing technical support for commissioning, performance testing and training.
China NERIN Chairman and President Wu Runhua said the company would draw on its experience in copper processing and international project execution to support delivery of the new facility.
KCM Deputy Chief Executive Officer Satish Kumar said the project represented an important part of the company’s growth strategy and its contribution to Zambia’s ambition of producing three million tonnes of copper annually.
The project comes as Zambia seeks to significantly expand its copper industry amid growing global demand for the metal, which is widely used in power grids, renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, advanced electronics and data centres.
Zambia has set a target of increasing national copper production to three million tonnes annually by 2031. The country produced 890,346 tonnes in 2025.
The new tailings project also forms part of renewed investment in KCM by its majority shareholder, Vedanta Resources. Vedanta has pledged more than US$1 billion towards expanding KCM operations, including development of the Konkola Deep Mining Project.
KCM is 79.4 percent owned by Vedanta Resources, while Zambia’s state-owned ZCCM Investments Holdings holds the remaining 20.6 percent.
The company says the new project is expected to create employment during construction and operations while generating opportunities for local suppliers and contractors in Zambia’s Copperbelt.
China NERIN’s regulatory disclosure values the contract at approximately 3.378 billion yuan, equivalent to about US$498 million based on the exchange rate specified in the agreement.
The Chinese company, however, said the signed contract has not yet taken effect. Under its terms, the agreement becomes effective 28 days after it has been signed and sealed by both parties or after China NERIN receives the advance payment, whichever occurs later.
China NERIN also disclosed that it will need to establish a local company in Zambia to execute the project and identified regulatory approvals, payments, exchange-rate movements and other overseas project risks as factors that could affect implementation.
Despite those conditions, the signing represents another significant link between Chinese industrial expertise and Zambia’s efforts to expand domestic copper production and extract greater value from its existing mineral resources.