Originally published on LinkedIn. This work is AI-assisted - read about how I work.
The Nchanga Open Pit wraps in an 11-km arc around Chingola. Nearly 30 km². The second-largest open-cast mine in the world. Nineteen kilometres north, the Konkola shaft descends 1,505 m into an orebody grading 2.9% copper.
This is not one mine. It is a copper system: smelter, refinery, tailings leach plant, pyrites mine. In a hundred years, it has never been fully operated.
The Lamba people worked copper on what they called Ilamba long before any concession existed. Francisco de Lacerda recorded them trading copper and ivory in 1798. In 1895, a colonial scout encountered people wearing copper bracelets along the Kafue River. The concessions arrived in the 1920s.
Anglo American built the system through Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines. Nchanga's open pit commenced in 1957, with ore grades around 6% copper. Konkola's shafts went down in the 1940s and 1950s. Chingola was founded in 1943 to house the people the mine required. In full production, KCM became Zambia's largest private employer.
Zambia nationalised the mines in 1969. ZCCM Investments Holdings Plc absorbed NCCM in 1982. During privatisation in the late 1990s, Anglo re-entered with 51% of the newly formed Konkola Copper Mines plc. The system it inherited was not the system it had left. Decades of deferred investment made the Konkola Deep project's economics unworkable. Anglo took a US$350m provision in 2002 and walked away. In November 2004, Zambia Copper Investments sold its 58% stake to Vedanta Group for US$25m.
A UK claimant law firm active in extractives claims across Africa represented 2,500 Zambian villagers in pollution claims against Vedanta. The UK Supreme Court ruled on jurisdiction in April 2019. Separately, the Zambian government placed KCM under provisional liquidation the following month. Vedanta settled the villagers’ claims in January 2021 without admitting liability.
The Hichilema government reversed course in September 2023. Vedanta paid US$245.75m under a July 2024 scheme of arrangement, and the mine was handed back in August. Monthly output rose from roughly 5,500 tonnes in December 2024 to about 8,200 tonnes a year later.
Vedanta's return has moved from settlement to execution. In February 2026, KCM engaged Australian contractors to advance the Konkola Deep Mining Project. In May it reopened the Chingola B shaft after eighteen years, targeting 200,000 t/month.
Three weeks later, the Nchanga smelter began a sixty-day planned maintenance shutdown, part of a US$2.7bn programme set out in an SEC filing.
Vedanta has routed that programme through CopperTech Metals, a US-domiciled company that filed for a proposed NYSE listing. ZCCM retains 20.6% of KCM.
At 1,505 m, the orebody grades 2.9% copper. A century after this system began to take shape, Vedanta is making the most serious attempt yet to realise its full potential.