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Mines/DR Congo

Ruashi mine

Ruashi mine, DR Congo. Producing, open pit, mining cobalt, copper.

Why Ruashi is famous

Ruashi Mining is 75 per cent owned by Jinchuan Group International Resources and makes copper and cobalt in DR Congo. In 2019 it made 5,070 t of cobalt in hydroxide. USGS gave the remaining mine life as 8 years, and Jinchuan began a plant for low-grade ore in June 2020 that could extend it.1,2

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1906Union Miniere du Haut Katanga created3
  2. 1967Union Miniere nationalised as Gecamines3

What kind of deposit

Sediment-hosted stratabound copper

Ruashi today

Where cobalt is mined todayWhere copper is mined todayMining in DR Congo

Where next

Events

Led toUnion Miniere du Haut Katanga createdRead what happened near Ruashi: Union Miniere du Haut Katanga created.1Led toUnion Miniere nationalised as GecaminesRead what happened near Ruashi: Union Miniere nationalised as Gecamines.1

Places

Located inLubumbashiRuashi is about 10 km from Lubumbashi.1

Deposit types

An example ofSediment-hosted stratabound copperRuashi belongs to the sediment-hosted stratabound copper family of deposits.4

Sources

  1. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  2. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Congo (Kinshasa) (advance release) US Geological Survey
  3. Historique Gecamines
  4. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Malachite on cobaltocalcite, Musonoi by Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pictures: Kopermijn te Kolwezi in de provincie Shaba (Katanka), Mieremet, Rob / Anefo / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Chiquicamata Mine, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).