Glencore, Gécamines strike land deal to grow KCC to 300,000 t/y

Glencore said an agreement with Gécamines to access additional land titles has boosted its ambitions to lift production from its Kamoto Copper Company operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 300,000 tonnes of copper a year.

Announcing a 6% decline in full-year adjusted EBITDA to $13.5bn for the year just ended, Glencore said the deal with the DRC's state-owned miner would unlock "a comprehensive package of long-term mining titles and leases" and extend Kamoto's life of mine into the 2040s. "Today we announced the finalisation of the KCC land access package with Gécamines, unlocking LOM extension, productivity and cost improvements and the pathway to approximately 300,000 tons of copper production," chief executive Gary Nagle said.

Replacing an old proposal

The deal replaced an earlier 2019 proposal, with Glencore producing 247,800 tonnes of copper from its African operations, including Mutanda, the previous year — a 10% increase on the year before. The company had separately unveiled plans in December to expand global copper production to around one million tonnes annually by the end of 2028, rising to 1.6 million tonnes by 2035, with the DRC positioned as one of the key sources of that near-term growth given the relatively modest capital required to expand an existing operation compared with building a new mine.

Land, not metal, was the constraint

The agreement highlighted a recurring theme in DRC copper mining: the binding constraint on production growth at established operations is often not ore reserves or processing capacity but access to land for waste dumps, tailings storage and pit expansion, all of which require negotiated agreements with the state and local communities. By resolving that land question at Kamoto, Glencore removed a hurdle that had constrained the mine's growth for years, and set the stage for a related agreement, struck the following day, under which Gécamines would take on a greatly expanded role marketing Kamoto's copper. The timing, alongside a group-wide earnings update, also let Glencore present the DRC deal as tangible evidence that its broader copper growth ambitions were more than just capital-markets-day slideware.

Sources

• Miningmx: Glencore to extend KCC in land deal with Gécamines, 18 Feb 2026

Photo: A copper electrolysis hall at a refinery near Kolwezi in the DRC's Katanga copperbelt. Gécamines (Zairian company), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.