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The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s state-owned mining company Gecamines plans to sell 100,000 tonnes of copper from one of the country’s biggest mines to the US in 2026, the miner said on Monday January 12.
Gecamines will sell the copper produced at Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) (in which it owns a 20% stake), with the help of joint-venture partner Mercuria, it added.
In 2025, Gecamines and trader Mercuria created a joint venture, backed by the US international Development Finance Corporation (DFC), to sell metal produced in the DRC and the collaboration has been the key to the DRC state miner re-establishing itself as a key supplier of copper in the international market.
In 2023, Gecamines. which used to be one of the world’s biggest producers of copper, reached an agreement with China’s CMOC Group – which owns the other 80% of TFM – to be able to supply metal from the TFM mine equal to its shareholding in the operation. The DRC state miner subsequently brought in Mercuria to help move that metal onto the market.
Shipping copper from TFM into the US market will help the country fulfil “certain agreements” reached between the DRC and the US government, Gecamines said.
“This first marketing operation is an extension and development of the competitive offer system established for the products of Gecamines’ partnerships, which have been in place since 2023 and have been successfully executed [so] far,” Gecamines chairman Robert Lukama said on Monday.
Fastmarkets calculated the weekly copper concentrates TC index, cif Asia Pacific – the mid-point between smelter and trader buying levels – at $(69.80) per tonne on Friday January 9, down by $0.10 per tonne from $(69.70) per tonne on January 2.
Gecamines owns stakes ranging from 20% to 51% in the DRC’s key mines and since 2023 has been pushing for a proportion of the physical metal produced at those mines, equivalent to its shareholding in those projects, as opposed to just relying on dividend payments.
The state miner said it would secure sales rights for up to 500,000 tonnes of copper and 40,000 tonnes of cobalt.
The company also said it was establishing a trading subsidiary, Gecamines Trading, to help market the metal.
The DRC produced 3.1 million tonnes of copper in 2024, data from the country’s central bank shows.
CMOC is ramping up output at its TFM and Kisanfu mines in the DRC and aims to produce a combined 0.8-1.0 million tpy of copper from 2028.
The mines, which CMOC bought from Freeport McMoRan in 2016, churned out 650,000 tonnes of the red metal in 2025, against a forecast output of 600,000-660,000 tonnes.
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