Zambia’s Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), majority owned by Vedanta, has signed a $498 million contract with China NERIN Engineering to develop a major copper recovery plant at its operations in Chingola, in the country’s Copperbelt. According to Reuters, the new Tailings Leach Plant will use leaching technology to extract copper from existing mine tailings and is expected to add approximately 70,000 metric tonnes of annual copper production. KCM said the facility is expected to become the largest plant of its kind in Africa, with China NERIN responsible for engineering, procurement and construction, as well as commissioning support, performance testing and workforce training.
The project forms part of KCM’s broader expansion strategy and comes as Zambia seeks to significantly increase its position in the global copper market. CNBC Africa reports that Zambia produced 890,346 tonnes of copper in 2025 and has set an ambition of reaching 3 million tonnes of annual production by 2031. The new plant will recover metal from existing mining waste, allowing KCM to extract additional value from resources that have already been processed while making greater use of existing infrastructure. The project will also operate alongside KCM’s existing tailings processing facilities at its Nchanga operations, adding another source of production capacity to the company’s Copperbelt portfolio.
The investment comes as copper becomes increasingly important to the global energy and technology economy, with the metal widely used in electricity grids, renewable energy infrastructure, electric vehicles and data centres. For Zambia, Africa’s second largest copper producer after the Democratic Republic of Congo, expanding production is central to efforts to capture greater economic value from its mineral resources. The KCM and China NERIN agreement therefore extends beyond a single mining project, linking Chinese engineering capacity with Zambia’s ambitions to scale copper output and meet rising global demand for a metal considered critical to the energy transition.
