Chambishi Copper Mine

The project is operated by Non-Ferrous China Africa (NFCA), also known as NFC Africa, a wholly owned China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group (CNMC) subsidiary. It is primarily a copper mining operation with underground mining on the main and west orebodies, and open-pit mining on the southeast orebody, but also produces gold as a minor byproduct . The Southeast Orebody Project launched in 2018 with a US$830 million investment. The Sino-Metals operation occupies 330 km² of mining licenses covering the Mwambashi and Samba areas; the Mwambashi open pit alone extracts 500,000 t of ore per year. It is noted as Africa’s first ‘digital mine’, producing ore that is fed to the concentrator for copper and cobalt concentrates. CNMC subsidiary Sino-Metals Leach Zambia handles hydrometallurgical operations, using leaching and solvent extraction to process lower-grade ores into copper cathodes.