The plant produced 29,513 tonnes copper in 2003, or 148% more than in the previous year, when the expansion was undertaken.
Between the first quarters of 2003 and 2004, the company’s overall copper production increased 122%, from 4,359 to 9,689 tonnes.
Production for all of 2003 totalled 29,513 tonnes.
The Bwana Mkubwa plant receives mill feed from both the Bwana Mkubwa underground mine in Zambia and the Lonshi open-pit mine in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The mines are in an arcuate zone of copper-cobalt deposits that extends from Ndola, Zambia, in the east and curves up and over the DRC before curving south again into the northwestern portion of Zambia and west into Angola.
The Bwana Mkubwa plant has the capacity to produce 35,000 tonnes of cathode copper per year. In 2003, it produced 29,513 tonnes of the red metal from 722,065 tonnes of ore grading 4.8% copper.
The plant also produces sulphuric acid, of which 75,228 tonnes were sold in 2003.
The measured and indicated resource at Lonshi, at the end of 2003, was 5.9 million tonnes grading 4.62% copper, equivalent to 273,714 tonnes copper. There is a further inferred resource of 226,133 tonnes at 4.62% copper. The waste-to-ore stripping ratio in 2003 was 6.3-to-1 — an improvement over the forecast life-of-mine stripping ratio of 8.4-to-1. The cost of transporting the Lonshi material was higher in 2003 than in 2002, and processing required more acid, owing to the ore’s dolomitic composition.
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