President felix Tshisekedi from DR Congo
The Tenke Fungurume mine located in Katanga is at the heart of tensions between the Congolese state, anxious to reassess the copper-cobalt reserves and China Molybdenum, an 80% shareholder in the project.
The commercial court of Lubumbashi, capital of Katanga, has appointed a temporary administrator for the mine. This decision removes the management from the current general manager, Jun Zhourepresenting the Chinese shareholder for the benefit of Sage Ngoie Mbayorepresentative of Gécamines, the Congolese public mining group.
The new administrator will be responsible for “reconciling the two partners on the points of divergence, namely access to technical information and to the company’s social affairs”, indicates the agency. Archyde.com. It is Gécamines, holder of 20% of the capital of the Tenke Fungurume mine, which asked last December for the appointment of this administrator, in a context of tensions between the Chinese group and the State. These tensions started in August 2021 with the establishment by Kinshasa of a commission responsible for establishing an estimate of the reserves of the mine.
This investigation is part of the broader framework of the examination of the mining assets of the DRC wanted by the president felix Tshisekedi. The latter believes that the Congolese have an insufficient share of the revenue generated by the wealth of their subsoil and want to renegotiate mining contracts.
The Tenke Fungurume mine produced 182,600 tons of copper and 15,400 tons of cobalt in 2020, but its owner announced in August 2021 an investment of $2.5 billion to increase annual copper production by 200,000 tons and that of cobalt of 17,000 tons.