Equinox Minerals’ Lumwana Mining has signed a five year concentrate offtake agreement with Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) for annual quantities of between 70,000 and 80,000 t (dry) of concentrates from the Lumwana copper mine (IM, March 2009) with an option by mutual agreement for additional annual quantities of Lumwana copper concentrates under the same terms as the Agreement. The copper treatment and refining charges under the Agreement are to be determined annually based on Japanese Smelter Benchmark terms.KCM is majority owned by Vedanta Resources, a London listed metals and mining company. KCM recently installed and commissioned the new Nchanga smelter on the Zambian Copperbelt; a modern smelter with output capacity of 300,000 t/y of copper anode and 1,850 t/d of sulphuric acid. KCM also operates the Nchanga and Konkola copper mines, the Nkana Refinery and is developing the Konkola Deep copper mine.

Commenting, Craig Williams, Equinox President and CEO said: “This new long term offtake agreement with KCM supplements the company’s existing long term offtake agreement with Chambishi Copper Smelter and together will account for a large majority of Lumwana’s budgeted production. Outside of these agreements, LMC continues to make deliveries of concentrates to international metal traders under short term contracts providing Equinox with concentrate off-take flexibility.”