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Around 2009, the DRC began to change from being a relatively small copper producer. Data from the International Copper Study Group now indicates that monthly production had increased to nearly 250,000 tonnes per month in 2024, from around 15,000tpm 15 years earlier.
This has been achieved while the traditional large copper-producing nations have struggled, principally Chile, whose production has been relatively unchanged over the same period.
One of the key reasons why the DRC’s copper production has grown faster than those of traditional producers is its vast, unexploited copper resources.
The largest copper mine in the world is BHP’s Escondida in Chile, the construction of which was finished in 1990. In 1998, Escondida’s headline copper ore grade was 2.75%, but data for the quarter ended September 2024 showed that this grade was down to 1.0%, significantly less than half the grade seen in the late 1990s.
In contrast, Kamoa-Kakula, the largest mine in the DRC, had an average ore grade of 4.58% in November 2024.
The DRC sits on a rich deposit of copper known as the central African copper belt, which has been much less thoroughly mined than the resources of other large producers such as Chile and Peru.
“The first big reason why DRC production is growing is that there are excellent resources that are relatively untapped,” a miner source told Fastmarkets.
“In Latin America, there is a high percentage of decades-old projects that are past their prime, as opposed to new-builds in the DRC,” Fastmarkets analyst Andy Cole said.
“The resource grades are remarkable,” Duncan Hobbs, head of research at copper trader Concord, said.
The DRC’s resources had remained untapped because Western miners were reluctant to invest in a jurisdiction that seemed politically and economically unstable.
“The DRC’s geopolitical conditions disincentivized investment,” Hobbs said.
But that changed more recently with an inflow of Chinese investment.
The influx of money from China came, industry sources said, at a time when Western companies were far less willing to invest in greenfield copper projects.
A number of the copper mines in the DRC are funded by Chinese investment. Kamoa Kakula is jointly owned by Ivanhoe (39.6%), Zijin Mining (39.6%) and the DRC government (20%).
Ivanhoe itself has a significant amount of Chinese investment, with CITIC Bank and Zijin Mining owning 22.35% and 12.24% of the company respectively.
Tenke Fungurume, another large mining project in the DRC, is 80% owned by CMOC, another Chinese mining company.
Chinese money has helped the DRC to exploit its untapped resources, and several trade participants told Fastmarkets that Chinese investment in mining projects led to quicker development than at Western mines.
“Production increases when Chinese investment comes in,” Hobbs said.
“I’d say the DRC is dominated by Chinese investment,” Cole said, “and into relatively new projects. As we’ve seen almost everywhere in the world, Chinese investment in new mines means they get built quickly and ramp-up fast. [In contrast,] Latin America is dominated by non-Chinese companies, so the pace of investment [in that region] can be slow, and ramp-ups often fail to meet guidance [figures].”
One Western miner source told Fastmarkets that Chinese miners could build mines at a speed that their Western counterparts could not match.
Another of the other factors at play was that the DRC has fewer permitting restraints than other copper-mining jurisdictions.
A number of sources told Fastmarkets that prolonged licensing procedures slowed new projects elsewhere in the world, whereas the relatively limited licensing in the DRC meant that projects could be developed more quickly.
They also said that Chile, the world’s largest copper-producing nation, has faced challenges in incentivizing investment and following through on it.
In part, this has been due to strict social and environmental legislation in Chile, particularly relating to water usage. These issues were also relevant in the US, Australia and Peru, where a number of mining projects have faced licensing issues and local protests.
“You face massive penalties in other nations for water usage,” a miner source said.
“Legislation is more restrictive in Latin America,” Cole said. “Workers are more militant, and local communities are more vocal against mining.”
These problems were less pronounced in Peru, which has managed to increase its production by 113% since 2009.
“Peru has done a decent job of getting mines into production in the past 20 years,” a junior mining source told Fastmarkets, noting the success of projects such as Las Bambas and Quelleveco.
Ultimately, there are a number reasons why the DRC has so quickly become one of the biggest producers of copper in the world, such as its rich ore deposits and good access to water.
But it required the massive ramp-up in investment that it received, and it needed other countries to lag on such investment. Without those factors, the DRC may not have grown to dominate the copper space as rapidly as it has.