Mining firm Ivanplats has announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state-owned power company, La Société Nationale d’Electricité (SNEL), to upgrade a third hydroelectric power plant – Nzilo 1 – to secure an additional supply of sustainable electricity for Ivanplats’ Kamoa copper discovery in Katanga province.
The proposed Nzilo 1 upgrade is in addition to the planned upgrades by Ivanplats of the Mwadingusha and Koni hydroelectric plants. The three plants would have a combined capacity of 200MW.
Following the signing of the MOU, Ivanplats and SNEL plan to conduct a Feasibility Study to assess the scope of work, and cost of restoring Nzilo 1 to its design capacity of 111MW.
The Nzilo 1 plant is on the Lualaba River, downstream of Nzilo Lake and north of the city of Kolwezi, in Katanga, approximately 40km from the Kamoa Discovery. Nzilo 1 was commissioned in 1952 to supply power to nearby copper mines in the Kolwezi region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but now it is only partly operational due to the age of the installed generating equipment.
The MOU provides that Ivanplats would finance the refurbishment through a repayable loan to SNEL and SNEL would grant Ivanplats a priority entitlement of power from the power grid.
"As is the case with any major mine development project, a dependable supply of electricity is a key consideration in planning production rates at Kamoa," said Ivanplats (TSX:IVP) Executive Chairman Robert Friedland. "Anything we can do to assist SNEL to improve the capacity and reliability of the supply of sustainable, cost-effective hydropower to the national grid in the Kamoa region could potentially allow us to increase the mining and smelting capacity at Kamoa to a level significantly higher than our planned initial mining rate of 7.5 million tonnes a year."
