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Africa’s copper giants have started to trade copper cathode and copper concentrates through state-owned entities as part of efforts to wring more revenues from the rise in copper output.
The drive by DRC and Zambia to trade some of the copper themselves also came with prices for the red metal soaring. The continent’s fabled Copper Belt straddles southern DRC and northern Zambia, and has been a ‘hunting ground’ for global investors seeking to exploit the abundant copper deposits with future demand for the metal forecast to be in cyclical deficit.
Since 2024, DRC state miner Gecamines has been trading a share of copper cathode that it gets from mines it jointly owns through Switzerland-based commodities trader Mercuria, chairman Robert Lukama told Fastmarkets in an interview on the sidelines of the FT Metals and Mining Summit in London on October 9.
Future copper supply and the outlook for the red metal were among the topics expected to be discussed when mining executives, traders, financiers and government officials gather for the London Metal Exchange’s LME Week event in London this week.
Gecamines’ shareholding ranges from 20% to 51% in almost all of the country’s mining projects, and the state miner has been negotiating to get a portion of the physical metal produced at those mines, equivalent to its shareholding in those projects, as opposed to just relying on dividend payments.
That is helping Gecamines to build a copper trading profile with the help of Mercuria, Lukama said.
Gecamines traded about 88,000 tonnes of copper last year from the DRC’s biggest copper and cobalt mine, the Tenke Fungurume Mine (TFM), through Mercuria, Lukama said.
TFM is ramping-up output to a total of 800,000-1 million tonnes per year of copper by 2028, from a forecast of 600,000-660,000 tpy this year. Gecamines owns 20% in the TFM mine while the rest is owned by China’s CMOC Group.
Gecamines also traded an additional 80,000 tonnes from a joint venture with China’s Sicomines.
As mines output ramps up, Gecamines’ share of metal could rise to about 250,000 tonnes in 2026, though much depends on the production performance at the joint ventures, Lukama said.
The strategy is to position Gecamines as one of the world’s top copper traders, helped by the surge in the DRC’s output and Mercuria’s financial backing, Lukama said.
A deal Gecamines is negotiating to trade 25% of output from Kamoto Copper Mines, owned by Swiss trading giant Glencore, is close to being concluded, Lukama said.
Mercuria is helping Gecamines in its efforts to establish itself as a copper trader, Lukama said.
“[Mercuria] is assisting us, it has a good profile. You know a brand could have some liabilities and we are making all the [necessary] efforts to improve the brand of Gecamines and [of] te partners coming in, Mercuria does not come in with any liabilities,” Lukama told Fastmarkets.
“[It] is new in the [metals trading] business, but it is good, it has a track record and it can deliver. It has capacity, it has financial means and therefore it makes our lives easier,” he added.
Investment from mostly Chinese companies, including MMG and China Nonferrous Mining Corp (CNMC), has catapulted the DRC to the position of the world’s second-largest copper producer, overtaking Peru.
The DRC produced 3.1 million tonnes of copper in 2024, data from the country’s central bank shows. This was up from 1.6 million tonnes in 2020.
Zambia’s state-owned Industrial Development Corp (IDC) also has a burgeoning relationship with Mercuria.
The IDC and Mercuria entered into an equally owned joint trading venture in 2024 and, since then, the trading unit has sold more than 200,000 tonnes of copper concentrates, Mulumba Lwatula, head of investments mining and energy at IDC, told Fastmarkets.
The IDC manages the venture through a newly established entity, Industrial Resources Ltd (IRL), which buys concentrates through Mercuria on commercial terms from mines in Zambia whenever there is limited smelting capacity and markets, Lwatula said.
The Zambian government has said that new investments from companies including First Quantum Minerals, Barrick Mining, Vedanta Resources and KoBold Metals could help to raise copper output to about 3 million tpy over the next decade, from 824,000 tonnes in 2024.
But Zambia first hopes to break the “psychological barrier” of getting copper output of more than 1 million tpy, a target that has eluded the African country for a decade, Lwatula said.
Zambia’s copper output is forecast to be slightly below 1 million tonnes this year, he added, declining to give specific figures.
That surge in output is a potential boon for the IRL and Mercuria due to Zambia’s limited smelting capacity, Lwatula said.
“That visibility that Mercuria brings to us in this partnership is key, not only in that aspiration for us to reach that goal [of 3 million tpy], but also in terms of getting a more equitable stake for our metals,” he said.
Zambia’s IRL also plans to boost its trading book with copper output rising, Lwatula said, who also sits on the board of the trading unit.
“We are getting back into the [trading] game, but it’s also about how we can leverage that resource that we have, to truly understand what happens from the mining of the resource all the way to being taken up by different market participants,” he said.
“But the [Mercuria] partnership is also about us understanding the flows of the metals. We are sitting in these rooms, we understand the documentation, we talk to the mining entities and we find solutions,” he said.
The IRL trading venture plans to set up an office in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, leveraging Mercuria’s infrastructure and financial backing to building its trading capacity, Lwatula said.
“Where there is availability and where there are capacity constraints on smelting that copper, that is where we find solutions to help the mines to offload some of that stockpiled copper,” he said.
“We go into the market on a commercial basis. We are not forcing market participants to work with us, but we are actually dealing with them on a commercial basis,” he added.
For Zambia, metals trading is not new. The country’s commodities trader, Metals Marketing Corp of Zambia, collapsed in the 1980s when the government nationalized mining assets. The partnership with Mercuria could help Zambia to rebuild some of that trading capacity, Lwatula said.
“This is why we partnered with Mercuria and, for us, it’s also about leveraging their expertise, their human capital as well their technology,” Lwatula said. “I think it’s the reputation [Mercuria] brings to the table and also its willingness to work hand in hand with us in terms of our own aspirations and our own strategy.”
In an echo of the approach adopted by Gecamines, partnering with Mercuria could help Zambia eventually to trade metals independently, Lwatula said.
“We are walking this journey with them,” Lwatula said. “For us, it has been a steep learning curve, but it’s an education that has been long overdue for the country.”
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