Midnight Sun in Zambia-DRC Copperbelt: project and logistics lens for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Midnight Sun Mining has declared an initial resource at the Kazhiba deposit in Zambia’s Domes Region, reporting 2.33 million indicated tonnes at 1.41% Cu (72.4 million lb contained), with mineralisation averaging only 30 metres deep over a 300 m x 350 m footprint less than 10 km from First Quantum’s Kansanshi mill. The company is using potential Kazhiba toll-milling cashflow to fund six-rig drilling along the 20 km Dumbwa anomaly, which samples at 0.73% Cu at surface, under COO Kevin Bonel, who previously led Barrick’s 1.6 Bt Lumwana resource. The project sits in a Copperbelt now framed by competing $2.1 billion Lobito Corridor and $1.4 billion Tanzania–Zambia rail upgrades, intensifying US–China logistics and offtake competition around First Quantum, Barrick and Ivanhoe–Zijin operations.
Technical Brief
- The Tanzania–Zambia line provides an alternative eastbound outlet to the Indian Ocean via Dar es Salaam.
- For regional copper projects, rail capex and routing decisions will materially affect delivered cost, schedule certainty and market access.
Our Take
In our database of 936 mining stories, only a small subset of copper and critical minerals pieces combine greenfield exploration like Midnight Sun’s Solwezi project with hard infrastructure commitments on the scale of the US$2.1‑billion Lobito Corridor, which signals unusually strong alignment between geology and logistics in the Zambian–DRC Copperbelt.
The relatively shallow average maximum depth of mineralisation at Kazhiba (around 30 m) and its proximity to First Quantum’s existing mill suggest that, if commercial terms can be struck, this could evolve into a low-capex, satellite-feed style operation rather than a standalone mine build, a pattern seen in several other Copperbelt assets in our coverage.
China’s 21% increase in ownership of Africa’s mines and 40% stake in the Kamoa‑Kakula complex, contrasted with US and multilateral financing into the Lobito Atlantic Railway and Angolan rail upgrades, indicates that copper and critical minerals logistics in this corridor are becoming a key arena for competing strategic supply chains rather than just project-by-project investment decisions.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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