“Like a sports team, Mopani copper mine, in Kitwe, Zambia is near the bottom of the league and needs to improve its ranking to avoid relegation or closure,” says diversified mining major Glencore’s Mopani copper mine CEO Johan Jansen, using a football analogy to explain where the company is in the worldwide league of costs. The mine has been in operation since 1931 and has already produced a “substantial amount” of copper during its lifetime, which has caused a decline in its existing reserves. The mine therefore has to dig deeper underground to find more copper. This increases its production costs which is one of the main reasons why Mopani is considered a high cost copper mine by world standards.
