The Democratic Republic of Congo increased its copper exports by almost 10% last year, reinforcing its position as the world’s second-largest producer of the industrial metal after Chile.
Shipments rose to 3.4 million tons in 2025, up from 3.1 million tons a year earlier, according to provisional government data released during the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town.
Congo’s expanding output is providing some relief to a copper market rattled by supply disruptions, including accidents and operational setbacks worldwide. Those challenges — combined with the slow pace of new mine development — come as demand for the metal accelerates, driven by the clean-energy transition and growth in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Supply constraints have helped push copper prices up 40% over the past year, with the metal surging to a record above $14,500 a ton at the end of January.
Chinese companies account for the bulk of Congo’s copper production. CMOC Group Ltd. owns the country’s No. 1 and No. 4 operations — the Tenke Fungurume mine, which produced 519,000 tons, and the Kisanfu project, which yielded 228,000 tons, according to data from the Mines ministry.
The second-largest copper mine was Kamoa-Kakula — a joint venture between Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and China’s Zijin Mining Group Ltd. — which produced 400,000 tons in 2025. Sicomines, controlled by Chinese state-owned firms, followed with 230,000 tons.
“Congo will be a world leader,” Robert Friedland, founder and co-chairman of Ivanhoe Mines, said in an interview this week. “The rate of growth of copper production in the Congo is by far the fastest in the world.”
Chile remained the top global producer last year, with output estimated at 5.3 million tons, according to the US Geological Survey. Congo, however, has climbed rapidly in global rankings, surpassing Peru and China, with its contribution to global supply more than tripling over the past decade.
Congo is typically also the world’s largest source of cobalt, used in electric-vehicle batteries as well as defense and aerospace applications. In 2025, however, shipments fell nearly 80% to 44,500 tons after the government imposed an export ban in February, followed by strict quotas from October. Copper and cobalt are usually extracted together in Congolese mines.
President Donald Trump’s administration has prioritized securing supplies of critical minerals and expanding US processing capacity. A Dec. 4 partnership agreement between Washington and Kinshasa grants American investors preferential access to some of Congo’s reserves of copper, cobalt, lithium and tantalum.
The pact has already spurred potential US-backed transactions.
Orion CMC — a vehicle led by Orion Resource Partners with support from the US International Development Finance Corp. — announced a preliminary deal to acquire stakes in Glencore Plc’s Congolese copper-cobalt assets.
Virtus Minerals Inc., led by former US military and intelligence officials, has agreed to purchase Chemaf SA, which encountered financial difficulties while developing what is expected to become one of the world’s largest cobalt mines.
Other major copper producers in Congo include units of Glencore, Zijin and China Nonferrous Mining Co.
M&B with Bloomberg