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The Democratic Republic of Congo is nearing a decision on the sale of Chemaf, the miner that has become a litmus test for the country’s new minerals partnership with the US.
Chemaf, which owns the Mutoshi copper and cobalt project, has become a political lightning rod as at least six bidders have emerged for the struggling company that was put up for sale in 2023.
The troubled asset has become an early test of how the US-DR Congo minerals partnership will work. The agreement was signed in December at the same time as a Washington-brokered peace deal between DR Congo and neighbouring Rwanda and is part of a US push to break its dependence on China for a host of critical minerals.
The years-long sale process for Chemaf could come to a conclusion as soon as Tuesday during a critical minerals ministerial meeting in Washington, according to several people close to the process.
“In the next couple of days or so we should be in a position to decide which way it goes,” Louis Watum Kabamba, DR Congo’s minister of mines, told the FT. “We understand that time is ticking,” he added. “We’ve got to run fast to complete this.”
The US has been lobbying for DR Congo to award the sale to a consortium led by Virtus Resources, a group founded by US security and intelligence service veterans. US hedge fund Orion, which has taken investment from the American government in its critical minerals fund, and Indian conglomerate Lloyds Metals are also members of the consortium.
Dubai-based Chemaf has been up for sale since 2023. A planned sale to China’s Norinco fell through in 2024 after opposition from local state-owned miner Gecamines as well as the US.
Other interested bidders include private Congolese company Buenassa and United Critical Minerals, founded by Austrian entrepreneur Cevdet Caner. Both groups are new to mining. At least three other groups also submitted bids but have not advanced in talks, according to people close to the process.
The sale has been difficult to negotiate because several parties hold veto power over any deal for Chemaf: its owners the Virji family; the DR Congo government, which holds a 5 per cent stake; and commodity house Trafigura, which is a crucial creditor after arranging a $600mn loan to the project in 2022.
Washington has strongly backed the Virtus bid and sees it as a symbolic transaction that would help solidify the minerals deal signed in December, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking.
Several people close to the transaction said Virtus was in the lead, although others said the deal was not yet finalised and could still change.
Chemaf currently produces less than 20,000 tonnes of copper a year, a small fraction of the global total, at its Etoile mine. It has the potential to become one of the world’s biggest cobalt producers once a $300mn expansion programme of its Mutoshi project is complete, which any new owner will have to fund.
Chris Vandome, who leads the Chatham House Critical Minerals Initiative in London, said Washington’s focus on Chemaf “reflects the US strategic interest in DRC as well as the new mercantilist approach to Africa of the Trump administration”.
China’s dominance over minerals supply chains was “core to US intervention in March 2021 to convince the Congolese not to sell Chemaf to a Chinese firm”, he added.
Although Kabama declined to say whether the DR Congo administration had a preferred bidder at this stage, he said a deal would be “beyond transactional” given its importance for local communities.
He added that at January’s Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, people were asking whether DR Congo had “sold out all its minerals to the Americans”. He rejected such suggestions, he said, with the countries’ partnership designed to work for both parties to help them “talk business”.
Kabama also confirmed that his government had sent a list of strategic mining projects in his country to Washington in the hope of encouraging investment into the assets.
Orion, Virtus, Trafigura, Buenassa and the Virji family all declined to comment.
