The Kipoi Mine (French: La mine de Kipoi) is a copper mine in Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo with an inferred 306,000 tonnes of copper in high-grade ore.[1]
Kipoi Mine is a joint venture between Tiger Resources (60%) and the state-owned Gécamines (40%). It was planned to start generating revenue in 2011.[1]In June 2011, Tiger Resources said they were negotiating to acquire a higher share of the operation from Gécamines.[2]
The Kipoi Mine property covers 5,500 hectares (14,000 acres). Actual mineral reserves with 3.35% copper or more are 2.68 Mt containing 7.0% copper, 0.2% cobalt and 4.5 g/t silver. Plans included installing a plant with crushing, scrubbing and heavy media separation (HMS) equipment to produce 120,000 tonnes of 25% copper concentrates annually. Two shaft furnaces would produce 32,000 tonnes annually of black copper ingots at 95% to 98% copper.[3]Tiger Resources invested more than $60 million to start the mine.[2]
In 2014, Tiger Resources bought out Gecamines' 40% stake in the Kipoi Mine for $111 million, leaving it as the sole shareholder.[4]
The target is to reach a capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year of copper metal.[3]By June 2011 Tiger was producing 25% copper concentrate at a rate of 130,000 metric tons a year.[2]The company was considering using $250 million from cash flow to build a Solvent Extraction Electrowinning (SXEW) copper cathode plant, with capacity of 50,000 tons per year.[2]In September 2011 the company announced that the SXEW study had proved positive at current copper prices, and the plant would start operation in mid-2014, initially processing residues from the HMS plant.[5]In October 2011 Tiger Resources slowed extraction of ore, since there was a stockpile with three month's supply.[6]