FIRST QUANTUM MINERALS: Kansanshi Digs Deeper
In Zambia, where copper is life for many, First Quantum Minerals is pushing its major mine, Kansanshi, to capacity levels not seen before. The expansion has driven excitement and challenge on site, but GM Meiring Burger explains that everything has been done to ensure long-term sustainability for mine, the community, and the company.
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Interview with Meiring Burger, GM of Kansanshi Mine
When the Cobre Panama mine fell silent in late 2023, a gap opened in the output of one of the world’s most closely watched copper producers. First Quantum Minerals puts the cost to Panama at about $3.5 billion in forgone economic contribution across 2024 and 2025, and the company had a hole of its own to fill. The answer lay on another continent, in the north-west of Zambia, where two large copper mines were waiting for their moment.
Canada may host the head office, yet copper’s centre of gravity for the group sits on the Zambian Copperbelt. First Quantum arrived in 1996 at Bwana Mkubwa, the country’s first new mining project in 35 years, and has been building ever since.
“We work in Zambia and South America after selling our smaller operations in Turkey and Spain,” says Meiring Burger, General Manager of Kansanshi Mine. “At Kansanshi, we do more than $3 billion annually in copper and gold, and, to a certain extent, acid too.”
Kansanshi, close to the town of Solwezi, is the ore body that made that number possible, and it is also where the nature of a maturing industry shows most clearly. “Our core business is copper. The copper mining industry is a challenging one because when you look at mature operations, including those in South America, the grades are declining. We have recently doubled our throughput, going from 27 million tons per year in processing to 54 million tonnes per year. That is to keep the production up while the grades have dropped,” says Burger.
“We also have a huge focus on our social licence to operate,” he adds. “Zambia is not a rich country, but the development here has been much higher than that of other countries in the region in recent times. We have invested close to $1 billion to double our capacity and increase capacity at the smelter.”
THE COMEBACK
Burger knows the ground from several angles. “I was a mine manager for FQM in Congo. I moved to become the mine manager at Kansanshi before moving to Sentinel Mine as Assistant GM,” he recalls. A spell running his own turnaround consultancy followed, and then the Cobre Panama situation materialised. “This led to the Zambian operation being required to increase capacity and improve operations and sustainability. I gave a presentation on how to fix the challenges and was bought on board to get the expansion going. That was an exciting proposition for me. I don’t like managing things that run well and are easy.”
The results arrived quickly. “We improved copper production significantly from a low of 135,000 tonnes in the year before I came on to 172,000 tonnes in just one year. We also doubled the gold output from 60,000 ounces to 120,000 ounces. We continued with strong progress and got the expansion project over the line, on time, under budget,” says Burger.
Global observers noticed the progress in Zambia. The S3 expansion, the sixth large SAG mill processing train at Kansanshi, was completed within its original capital budget and is expected to add around 80,000 tonnes of annual copper-equivalent output at full ramp-up. Scotiabank raised its price target on First Quantum in January, citing the under-budget delivery and strong Zambian output.
Success on that scale brings its own growing pains, but Burger sees opportunities over problems. “For now, the task is steadying the ship,” he says. “It was a big shock to the system to move from 27m tonnes to 54m tonnes and then doubling all of the inputs around that – the water, the energy, the tailings etc. It is hectic to change all of these things dramatically.
“The pressure on the mine to feed the smelter is massive,” he continues. “We changed the mining strategy which was not necessarily tailored for Kansanshi. That is still a work-in-progress and people are still finding their feet, but we will get to a stage when things are steadier.”
A MARKET ON FIRE
The timing could hardly be better. Saxo Bank’s June analysis has copper up about 14% for the year and roughly a third above its level 12 months earlier, with LME prices near $14,000 a tonne. Disruptions at Grasberg and Kamoa-Kakula are estimated to have removed 1.5 million tonnes of supply in 2025, and demand is being pulled upward by power grids, electric vehicles, battery storage and AI data centres. The bottleneck sits at the mines, where new projects are slow, costly and fighting falling ore grades.
Burger sees the same pinch from the pit rim. “Unfortunately, exploration spend is not increasing. The good projects are less and less, and they are more difficult, and against increasing prices, you still don’t see reciprocal increases in exploration. There are many long-term issues that we do notice that remain risky for everyone in the industry.”
People, or a lack thereof, rank high among those risks. “It’s difficult to attract talent in the mining industry – it’s no longer a sexy industry and we have struggled the last few years to get the right people,” says Burger. “In the mining industry, because of years of under investment in HR, there is a ‘grey tsunami’ where a lot of people are reaching retirement age in the next five years and there is no one who have similar experience and skill to replace them. South Africa is a good example. There used to be a lot of training in artisanal skills but that has not and does not happen anymore. It stopped in the late 1990s when everything became about the bottom line and not about sustainability. This is the big change in the industry and it involves people.”
SMARTER DIGGING
Technology offers a solution to some operational challenges, and Kansanshi has moved early. “There is a lot more automation and AI applications, and we are at the forefront of that, especially with our trucks and our electrification. Automated drilling and hauling is well underway and that means less humans in the seats with a lot more remote control,” says Burger. “AI enables you to do a lot more in a shorter time and you can cover more in terms of exploration and data.”
Electrification is changing the fleet, with AI helping to manage movement in the most efficient and safest ways possible. “All of our pits now have trolley assist with electric trucks coming out. A lot of our fleet in drilling and loading are now fully electric and that is much cheaper and efficient. As long as you have a steady electricity supply then you are fine, but we are aware of the Southern African Power Pool challenges. We import 80-90% of our power usage from outside of Zambia as the country has faced severe loadshedding schedules in the past year. Zambia is mostly hydro powered, and there is a lot of solar rollout happening all over the country and the tech is improving day by day.”
Partners make that possible. A 220-ton battery truck has been trialled at Kansanshi in the past two years. A lot of technology related projects are underway, and new input crushers have been installed recently. “We have very strong partnerships with technology and equipment partners which we have enjoyed for many years,” Burger says. “In a tech heavy industry, you cannot take bleeding edge technology straight into operations. You have to work with partners that are proven and who can demonstrate that they are trusted.”
Geography also adds its test; Zambia has no coastline, and is often overlooked in terms of its vast, rural landscape. “Mining in Africa is not straightforward, and Zambia is landlocked, so everything comes through a harbour of another country. Having backup in terms of logistics and support is crucial, and this is where supplier track record comes into play,” says Burger. Local rules have raised the bar further with regulation meaning that a lot of the procurement has to come from Zambian companies. “That complicates the supply chain slightly, but we did have to do a lot of work to ensure the local companies we are partnering with are Zambian owned to ensure we comply with new rules. It was a time of upheaval but also a time of opportunity for Zambian companies to come into the market with an edge,” says Burger.
What carries a mine through all of this is a way of working that Burger says truly sets First Quantum apart. “FQM is a company that is very good at getting things done. We make quick decisions, and that is why we can operate in difficult places. We are a growing company. Just looking at our growth profile, irrespective of the fact that we lost the Panama operation, we are still growing. That is because of our agility and the fact that we are ahead of the curve with creativity.
“Our partners will tell you that we make decisions quickly and we have an appetite for progress. We don’t have layers of bureaucracy and that allows us to operate the way we do. That is the only way to achieve fast growth,” he adds.
The next chapter points to bigger ground. “FQM has many big expansions on the horizon, and there are many low-grade operations with huge mining requirements and that is what I will be looking at going forward,” says Burger. With copper tight, the expansion delivered and automation spreading through the pits, Kansanshi has become the engine of a group that lost one giant mine and kept growing anyway.