Who owns the Chemaf Congo cobalt mine now
The question of who owns the Chemaf Congo cobalt mine now has an answer as of March 2026. Virtus Minerals, an American mining company, and Lloyds Metals and Energy, an Indian mining company, control it together, through a joint holding company, after clearing the last 2 regulatory approvals required inside Congo. The Congo Minister of Mines, Louis Kabamba Watum, approved the transfer of control on 2026 03 13. Gecamines, the Congo state mining company holding the Mutoshi mining lease, approved it 6 days later, on 2026 03 19.
This is a defining moment, not just for Virtus, but for everyone who believes in the future of Congolese American partnership.
Phil Braun, chief executive of Virtus Minerals. Source 1.
Gecamines approval mattered because the Mutoshi mining lease runs through it directly, the last step before full control passed to the 2 buyers.
We are grateful to the Gecamines Board of Directors for convening to consider this matter and for providing the clarity we need to move forward.
Andrew Powch, chief financial officer of Virtus Minerals. Source 2.
The ministry states its reason directly. Congo produces over 70% of world cobalt, and Chinese companies control most current production and processing, so it treats an ownership change at Chemaf as a state matter, not a private deal between 2 foreign companies.
The 2 mines inside the deal
The deal brings 2 mining assets in the Katanga copper belt in Congo into the joint holding company. Etoile, already operating, produces 20,000 tonnes a year of copper cathodes, a refined copper product ready to sell, and 4,000 tonnes a year of cobalt in an intermediate salt still needing further refining, Lloyds Metals and Energy states. Mutoshi, still under construction, is rated to add a further 50,000 tonnes a year of copper and 16,000 tonnes a year of cobalt once it is finished.
Copper and cobalt are 2 different metals shown on the same axis only because both are measured in tonnes a year. The chart compares mine to mine within each metal, not copper against cobalt.
Show the numbers
| Mutoshi copper, planned | 50000 |
| Etoile copper, operating | 20000 |
| Mutoshi cobalt, planned | 16000 |
| Etoile cobalt, operating | 4000 |
Chemaf says it has already put more than 570 million dollars into the 2 sites, with 250 to 300 million dollars more planned before Mutoshi reaches production, including a 128 million dollar processing plant at Etoile.
The world cobalt supply the deal sits inside
Congo mined an estimated 75% of all cobalt mined worldwide in 2024, the United States Geological Survey counts, and only 13% of all copper mined worldwide the same year, a far smaller share of the second metal Chemaf mines.
Both figures are the Democratic Republic of Congo own 2024 share of world mine production, counted by the United States Geological Survey.
Show the numbers
| Cobalt | 75 |
| Copper | 13 |
Put the combined rated cobalt capacity of the 2 Chemaf mines against that 2024 world total, and once Mutoshi is finished, the future capacity of 1 Congo producer works out to about 6.6% of all cobalt mined worldwide in 2024, a MAOWCE calculation. Etoile is rated at 4,000 tonnes a year of cobalt and Mutoshi at 16,000 tonnes once built, a combined 20,000 tonnes, divided by an estimated world total near 301,000 metric tons, found by dividing the 226,000 metric tons Congo mined by its stated 75% share. That is a future capacity measured against a past year output, not what Chemaf produces today, since Mutoshi is still under construction, and it corrects a working figure of about 5% that no source here could confirm.
What the deal does not say
Neither Virtus Minerals release states a purchase price for Chemaf. Both describe only the regulatory approvals, not what changed hands financially. The number that matters here is not the price but the 75%, the share of all cobalt mined worldwide in 2024 that already comes from 1 country, now with 2 more foreign companies holding a stake inside it.