New transport route for African minerals through Angola sees first copper transit.

The first trial rail cargo of 1,100t of copper concentrate successfully arrived at the port of Lobito in Angola from Kamoa-Kakula, DRC, on 31 December. This is the very first export under the new Lobito Atlantic Rail Corridor concession and marks the start of a new supply chain route for exporting minerals from the DRC, Angola and neighbouring countries. In terms of infrastructure, it is anticipated that the Lobito corridor could become one of the most important rail transport networks in the South African Development Community over the next 25 years. 

The upgraded Benguela railway line links the Atlantic port of Lobito with the DRC Copperbelt. It extends 1,289 kilometres east, from the port of Lobito to the Angola-DRC border town of Luau. The line then extends a further 450 kilometres east into the DRC, on the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer du Congo (SNCC) rail network, to Kolwezi.  

The shipment follows the award of a US$450M contract by the Angolan Ministry of Transport to a consortium of Trafigura, Mota-Engil and Vecturis to operate and maintain the railway through to the DRC on a private concession basis. 

In terms of copper, this is significant in that the time taken to reach Lobito from the mine was just 8 days, compared with the average of 25 days trucking by road to Durban in South Africa. Currently, Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula trucks its copper concentrates by road across sub-Saharan Africa to the ports of Durban in South Africa and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, as well as Beira in Mozambique and Walvis Bay in Namibia. In 2023, approximately 90% of Kamoa-Kakula’s concentrates were shipped to international customers from the ports of Durban and Dar es Salaam, where an average round-trip takes between approximately 40 and 50 days.  

Ivanhoe Mines sees the shipment by rail of copper concentrates as a major step forward to lowering the carbon footprint associated with exporting material in its drive towards “green copper” production, as transport by this rail link will be less energy-intensive.