Canada-headquartered Ivanhoe Mines is considering an expanded copper mining development in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which will rank the Kamoa-Kakula mine as the world’s second largest after the giant Escondida mine of BHP and Rio Tinto in Chile.
At an expanded production rate of 18-million tonnes a year with peak copper output of 740 000 t/y, Kamoa-Kakula will be a bigger producer than the projected 2025 output of Grasberg, in Indonesia, and Oyu Tolgoi, in Mongolia.