Copper and cobalt miner Katanga Mining, which on January 11 completed a merger with former competitor Nikanor, plans to produce over 300 000 t of copper and 30 000 t of cobalt from its central African mines by 2011, an executive said on Wednesday.

Chairperson, president and CEO Arthur Ditto said that the combined firm would see $50-million in “financial improvements” through exploiting synergies and removing duplications of the two companies’ operations, situated in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Katanga was moving ahead with the KOV openpit mine’s development programme, where it was also building a solvent-extraction electrowinning plant.

This would more-than-double production capacity at the project, Ditto stated in a presentation at the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town.

He predicted that Katanga would be in the top-five group of copper producers. Ditto added that Katanga had projects with the best copper grades in the world.

Copper is used for electrical wiring, while cobalt is used in batteries and in aeroplanes.

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