Kinsevere Copper Project

Sedgman provided engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) assistance and commissioning assistance for the 0.5 Mt/a Kinsevere Copper Project.

Kinsevere is a copper mine located in the Haut-Katanga province about 30 km from Lubumbashi in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The project is now owned by MMG Limited.

Copper oxide is mined from three mineralised zones, namely Central Pit, Mashi Pit, and Kinsevere Hill.

The operation produces copper cathode through conventional mining methods. Following plant and grinding mill processing, acid-leaching, solvent extraction and electrowinning were used to plate the copper.

SCOPE OF WORKS

The challenges addressed by Sedgman included dealing with an extremely remote site with the difficulty of access whilst managing the safety of our personnel.

Sedgman provided EPC 500,000 t/a greenfield crushing and heavy media separation (HMS) plant to recover copper concentrate, subsequent brownfield upgrade.

The processing facility consists of the following:

• Three-stage crushing and associated screening
• Wet scrubbing, HMS of coarse material
• Spiral separation of fine material and associated services.

OUTCOMES

Following successful commissioning and ramp-up to design capacity of the crushing and HMS circuits, Sedgman provided engineering and procurement services to evaluate, design and procure a spiral plant for the recovery of copper from the slimes, which were untreatable in an HMS circuit.

The spirals upgrade circuit was commissioned in the second quarter of 2008.