By CHATULA KANGALI –
CHINA Non-Ferrous Metal Company (CNMC) will spend in excess of US$100 million to de-water Shaft 28 at the Luanshya Copper Mines (LCM).
LCM Chief executive officer Lou Xingeng said in an interview that more than $100m would be needed to de-water shaft 28, which has been flooded for more than 10 years.
He said CNMC would commerce the de-watering process provided that there was a stable economic and political policy in Zambia.
“A stable economic and Political policy is what we need to invest in de-watering shaft 28. At the moment, a stable policy is very important, that is what we need because we do not know what will happen tomorrow,” he said.
Mr Lou said LCM had already spent more than $500m during the last five years of its investment on contractors and that,  they have not gotten back anything from the contractors.
He said LCM was still paying interest of the loan to  the bank alone.
Mr Lou said Muliashi Mine was preforming well and on course with production and that this year, 30 000 tonnes had so far been produced.
“Muliashi mine’s performance is very good, the only problem we have is the bad resources. The grade of copper is very low and it is currently at 40 per cent. We are already spending lot of money to produce good grade of copper,” he said.
Mr Lou said LCM was heating the ore at more than 65 degrees in order to recover a good grade of copper.
He said the proposed increase in electricity tariffs by Zesco would make operations at Muliashi more difficult because it requires lot of power.
Muliashi mine has the annual production capacity of 40,000 tonnes and a work force of 1,000.
It is currently the largest heap leaching plant in the world.