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Rough ride for Congo miners
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Fri, 16 Nov 2007

[miningmx.com] -- TO SAY RUNNING a mining operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is extremely difficult is an understatement. There are challenges on all sides: from a changing political and legal environment, artisanal miners, scant infrastructure and, if there are existing operations available, the challenges of a complete overhaul of what was once there.

Toronto-listed Katanga Mining, which recently unveiled a proposal to merger with UK’s Nikanor, has to confront those issues at its $424m project at Kamoto, a mining operation run for decades by state-owned miner Gecamines on the Congolese copperbelt.

The World Bank Group says two major constraints to developing the DRC’s vast natural resources treasure chest are either existing or potential conflicts between large-scale mining companies and those conducting artisanal mining on their concessions, plus a poor infrastructure.

Travelling around the copper-rich Katanga province is an exercise in patience and endurance. The roads are awful, with very few tarred surfaces. In the rainy season they become virtually impassable. Driving on any tarred roads is a tortuous affair due to numerous deep potholes.

Against that background the mines truck in everything they need and send out their product the same way. Moreover, a mining company’s vehicles may be at the beck and call of the military – a painful lesson learnt by Australia’s Anvil Mining, which was accused by human rights groups of being complicit in a massacre of villagers after the army requisitioned and used its transport.

Meanwhile, the scale of environmental degradation at Kamoto is jaw-dropping. There are thousands of tons of scrapped equipment rusting on-site and vast dumps of waste and tailings in poor condition.

Fortunately for Katanga Mining’s shareholders, the responsibility to clear up most of this mess lies with the DRC’s state-owned base metals company Gecamines. Restoration of the mines, both underground and opencast, and processing plant and the SX-EW facility, rests with Katanga.

Kamoto is one of the DRC’s few “mine-to-finished” copper projects. It’s also one of the biggest and will be one of the first into major production in a relatively short time.

Our biggest problem was we didn’t have money
“It was shocking to see that something could end up like that. I’ve never seen anything quite like it – and I’ve worked in the former Soviet republics,” says Arthur Ditto, CEO of Katanga Mining. “The state of the operations over there was similar but not on the scale we have here. It’s an absolute shambles.”

The company, which has been on site since June 2006, has already removed 40,000 cubic metres of debris. “We had to do that before we could even start,” Ditto says.

Years of neglect and mismanagement by Gecamines are starkly evident, not only in the tons of rusting, broken equipment but at the plants, where cladding has rusted through or vanished. The flotation cells have huge rusted, gaping holes. There are trucks abandoned on railway tracks that have long been covered over or removed.

One of the hurdles faced by the North American company is to change the mindset of its workforce, which worked for five years without pay and kept the plant going only to mine enough copper and cobalt to sell to earn some income, a mine official says.

“That alone is a very big challenge,” Ditto says. “The approach we’re taking is continuing to evolve. What we’re doing now might not be the most effective approach in the future.”

The changes the Canadian company has already achieved stand out starkly at the dilapidated plant. It’s refurbishing mills and flotation cells and restoring hundreds of electro-winning baths.

But it’s the new approach to safety that’s instantly commented on by former Gecamines employees. “It’s a very big change for all of us. We must all be most careful with safety. The plant is still not in very good condition, but the safety here now is very good,” said Honore Madu, the maintenance manager at the processing plant.

“It’s a very good thing for us to see how this plant is running again. Our biggest problem was that we didn’t have money to repair anything. It’s like someone who was dead being resurrected. It’s bringing great joy.”

Katanga plans to bring 150,000 tonnes of copper to the market from 2010, possibly more because the plant’s capacity is 175,000 tonnes, with Gecamines reaching peak output of 17,000 tonnes. The cobalt target by 2010 is 8,000 tonnes.

Katanga also has to deal with an estimated 1,000 artisanal miners, apparently ubiquitous on every mining project in the DRC, to help with the environmental legacy. There are an estimated 25,000 diggers in the greater Kolwezi area.

“We’re putting in place social programmes because we not only want to help the artisan miners but because we also want to mitigate risk,” says Martin Christie, Katanga’s director of corporate social responsibility.

One of the schemes – once there’s sufficient and cheap enough transport in place – is to set up a team of former artisan miners to process hundreds of thousands of tons of scrap steel and iron to ship to recycling facilities in the DRC, South Africa or plants overseas.

The other project is a sustainable farming project to provide the shabby town of Kolwezi with fresh vegetables and the mess facilities of Kamoto. Nikanor is starting its mining project right on Kamoto’s boundary, another possible customer for the farm that employs 70 people, a number of them former artisan miners.

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“Agriculture went by the wayside in Kolwezi as people turned to artisanal mining for their livelihoods,” Christie said. Both Katanga and Anvil have employed hundreds of them at their mining and processing operations in an effort to prevent confrontation over land use.

A government clampdown on metal traders, many of them from China and India, has also crimped the market for sales from artisanal miners, says Rudy Cornet, Katanga’s director of security and community affairs. “Just chasing away the diggers is no real solution, because behind the diggers are the traders. Those are the right people to persecute,” he says. “But it’s getting better and better. The government is taking the right measures to fix the problem.”

A three-man team of artisanal diggers earns around $12 for three days’ work to collect a 55kg bag of concentrate producing 25% copper. A farming job is seen offering steady, safer employment and regular wages that aren’t tied in to mounting debt incurred with unscrupulous traders, Cornet says.