Rising prices anchor local base metal bounce-back

Copper and nickel production is set to resume in the country, six years after all the country’s mines closed. Investors are leveraging on stronger base metal prices to finalise acquisitions of suspended operations and fast-track new mines.

A commodity price rout in 2016 resulted in the closure of BCL Ltd’s mines, which up to that point, had been the country’s main base metal producer for 60 years. Mines owned by Discovery Metals Ltd and African Copper Plc also shut down, collectively retrenching thousands of workers. Together the mines accounted for about 4.5 percent of the country’s exports in the first half of 2016.