Mopani declines to use its 100,000t duty-free concentrate export quota

Mopani Copper Mines, the Zambian unit of Abu Dhabi's International Resources Holding (IRH), has said it does not intend to export any of the copper concentrate it has been allowed to ship duty-free, even after receiving the biggest share of the government's latest exemption, Bloomberg reported on 4 June.

The waiver

On 2 June the government suspended its 10% export duty on 271,742 tonnes of copper concentrate until 30 September, according to a notice seen by Reuters. The duty normally encourages miners to process their material at Zambia's four operational smelters; exemptions are granted when smelting capacity is constrained. Exports under the scheme must go through state-owned Industrial Resources Ltd, which has a metals-trading partnership with Mercuria Energy Group.

Mopani was allocated 100,000t. Barrick's Lumwana Mining Company received 56,986t, while First Quantum Minerals and Chinese-owned Nkana Mining and Minerals Processing were each granted about 43,000t, Business Insider Africa reported.

The extension was driven by a cluster of smelter outages. Konkola Copper Mines began a planned 60-day shutdown of its Nchanga smelter on 29 May, and the Mopani and Chambishi smelters were also scheduled for extended maintenance during the year.

Mopani's position

The company said its stance had not changed since the first exemptions were announced in July 2025, when it said it had no plan to export any part of its allocation and would put the material through its own processing operations in support of domestic refining. Mopani received allocations of the same size in mid-2025 and again in March 2026, according to Bloomberg.

IRH, part of a conglomerate controlled by UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, acquired 51% of Mopani in early 2024. State investor ZCCM-IH holds the balance.

Why it matters

Mopani's refusal is partly strategic and partly practical. It owns one of the smelters that the duty is designed to protect, and it has said its priority is to smelt all available concentrate. The decision also carries political weight: the concentrate duty is a pillar of Zambia's push to capture more value from its copper, and a large foreign-owned producer declining to use the loophole reinforces that policy at a sensitive moment ahead of the August general election.

For other producers without their own smelting capacity, however, the waiver remains an important safety valve that allows mines to keep running while processing capacity is offline.

Sources

• Mining.com (Bloomberg): Abu Dhabi's IRH turns down Zambian copper concentrate waiver, 04 Jun 2026
• Business Insider Africa: Middle East, Chinese state miners secure lion's share of Zambia's duty-free copper export quota, 03 Jun 2026

Photo: The city of Kitwe on Zambia's Copperbelt, home to Mopani's Nkana operations. Per Arne Wilson, Norway, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.