HONG KONG – China's Jinchuan Group International Resources plans to double its African copper and cobalt production in the next two to three years, its CEO said on Thursday.
The company currently produces around 50 000 t of copper and 5 000 t of cobalt a year, Gao Tianpeng said at the LME Asia Week conference in Hong Kong.
"In the next to two three years we will double our capacity," he said.
Miners are boosting copper and cobalt production to meet demand from an expected boom in electric vehicles.
Jinchuan's mining unit, Metorex Group, is headquartered in South Africa and controls the Ruashi Mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo that produces copper and cobalt and in Zambia, the Chibuluma South copper mine.
Metorex produced 42 512 t of copper last year, steady from the year before, and 4 638 t of cobalt, up from 3 391 t in 2016.