Qualla: Kolwezi tailings project https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:26 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Kolwezi tailings project https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project Kolwezi tailings project: Introduction https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project/ The waste itself is the ore now. After seventy years of copper mining in Kolwezi, the main river valley is filled with tailings - the sandy, grey-brown residue left behind after the valuable metal was pulled from the rock. Wind lifts it off the dumps and carries it through the town of 200,000 people. And somewhere inside those heaps, still locked in grains the old refineries could not reach, sits roughly 1.68 million tonnes of copper and 363,000 tonnes of cobalt. Mining companies came to Kolwezi not to dig new holes but to re-process the old ones. What followed was one of the stranger ownership fights in African mining history.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/4/5/kolwezi-tailings-project-wp/kw45-kolwezi-tailings-project-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kolwezi tailings project: A Town That Mines Its Own Past https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project/ Kolwezi sits in the old Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a mining center for a century and counting. The state enterprise Gécamines opened the Luilu refinery here in 1952, feeding it ore from open pits to the west and spitting out copper concentrates. Wha...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/4/5/kolwezi-tailings-project-wp/kw45-kolwezi-tailings-project-a-town-that-mines-its-own-past.mp3 0:06 2 full Kolwezi tailings project: Making Metal From Mud https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project/ The pitch was elegant on paper. Build a plant to reprocess the Kingamyambo tailings dam and the Musunoi river deposits. Squeeze out around 70,000 tonnes of copper metal a year and up to 14,000 tonnes of cobalt hydroxide - the kind of cobalt that now flows into lithium-ion batteri...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/4/5/kolwezi-tailings-project-wp/kw45-kolwezi-tailings-project-making-metal-from-mud.mp3 0:06 3 full Kolwezi tailings project: The Day The Jobs Vanished https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project/ In September 2009 First Quantum stopped work at Kolwezi. Roughly 700 people lost their jobs. The company had already sunk about $750 million into acquiring and developing the property when the DRC government revoked its license. First Quantum filed an action against the governmen...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/4/5/kolwezi-tailings-project-wp/kw45-kolwezi-tailings-project-the-day-the-jobs-vanished.mp3 0:06 4 full Kolwezi tailings project: A Billion-Dollar Handshake https://qualla.com/kolwezi-tailings-project/ In January 2012 the parties settled. ENRC paid First Quantum US$1.25 billion. First Quantum dropped its arbitration against the Congolese state. ENRC got clean title to the Kolwezi tailings and First Quantum's other DRC assets. The government escaped further international censure...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/4/5/kolwezi-tailings-project-wp/kw45-kolwezi-tailings-project-a-billion-dollar-handshake.mp3 0:06 5 full