Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is Zambia's largest copper producing mine and is majority-owned by Vedanta Resources. Vedanta bought KCM from Anglo American in 2004. Since then, Vedanta have overseen a scaling up in its operations while presiding over an extremely poor record on environmental abuses, infringements on internationally accepted labour standards and has continued to pay very little tax to the national government.
current status (Apr 18, 2011) Zambia's Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) plans to invest $172 million in a new copper treatment project with a 13 year lifespan. The proposed project is planned to produce 50,000 tonnes of finished copper per year. As a news article reports: "The materials will be treated using a process known as agitated leaching. This process uses acidic solutions to treat the materials into finished copper."
brief history In 1990s mining companies took advantage of the fact that the Zambian state was desperate to secure new investment to negotiate their purchase of the state-owned Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) assets under ‘Development Agreements’ that exempt them from covering most of ZCCM’s liabilities, including pensions for its employees, from paying most taxes, and from many national laws, for example on environmental pollution. These agreements have a highly unusual legal status, only otherwise accorded the Zambian Constitution. They cannot be contradicted by future legislation as ‘Stability Periods’ ensure the policies in place when agreements were made cannot be changed for between 15 and 20 years. In some cases, by the end of these periods, all of the copper ore remaining in the mines will have been removed. Given their massive implications, what is amazing about the Development Agreements is that they had been kept secret until uncovered in 2006.
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