Gécamines
| Générale des Carrières et Mines
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Public company |
| founding | 1906 |
| Seat | Lubumbashi |
| Branch | raw materials |
| Website | www.gecamines.cd |
Gécamines ( Générale des Carrières et Mines , formerly Union Minière du Haut Katanga ) is the name of a mining company and the associated mining complex in the province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Mainly copper and cobalt ores are mined in the complex, which is up to 300 km long and 70 km wide .
The facility, which was nationalized in 1966, partially generated 70% of the country's export income. It emerged from the Belgian company Union Minière du Haut Katanga , which had previously been expropriated and nationalized. The mining amounts in the 1970s amounted to up to 700,000 tons of copper and 18,000 tons of cobalt annually. The initially profitable plant had to struggle with the sharp drop in copper prices since 1971. This ultimately led to a reduction in mining capacities to around 30,000 tons of copper and 3,000 tons of cobalt in 1994.
In 1998 the company was privatized by the provincial governor, Augustin Katumba Mwanke , and sold to Ridgepointe Overseas , a company owned by Billy Rautenbach, a Zimbabwean investor related to Robert Mugabe .
The company has been headed by Paul Fortin since 2006, the Canadian lawyer running the ailing mining group on behalf of the World Bank.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The Panama Papers. Retrieved September 28, 2019 .
- ↑ FRANÇOIS MISSER / DOMINIC JOHNSON: Mine power struggle shakes Congo . In: The daily newspaper: taz . March 5, 2007, ISSN 0931-9085 , p. 10 ( taz.de [accessed on September 28, 2019]).
Coordinates: 10 ° 42 ′ 39.2 ″ S , 25 ° 23 ′ 56.5 ″ E