:: Chinese Firms Eye Copper Ore, New Smelter in Zambia

China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co. Ltd. and Yunnan Copper Industry (Group) Co. Ltd. have agreed to expand production at Zambia's Chambishi copper mine and build a smelter.

Resource-hungry China is the world's top consumer of copper but produces less than 30 percent of its copper concentrate, the raw material for the metal.

An official for China Nonferrous said Yunnan Copper's investment would speed up development of the Zambian mine, which currently produced about 65,000 tonnes of copper concentrate annually, about 21,000 tonnes of metal. The two state-owned Chinese companies want to expand production at Chambishi to 110,000 tonnes a year of copper and build a 150,000-tonne-per-year smelter, according to officials.

All blister, a semi-finished raw material for refined copper production, to be produced from that smelter would be shipped back to China.

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