• Kansanshi Mining produced a record 170,929 tonnes of copper in 2025 after the S3 expansion reached commercial production
• CAFCA recorded revenue of USD 39.49 million in 2025, with profit after tax falling 68% due to import competition and power quality challenges, despite a recovery in early 2026
• Zambia is capturing significant value through large-scale copper mining and investment, while Zimbabwe’s downstream copper manufacturing remains small and constrained by infrastructure and policy limitations

Harare- Kansanshi Mining has produced 170,929 tonnes of copper in 2025, its highest annual output since 2021 and above First Quantum's revised guidance range of 165,000 to 175,000 tonnes, and within First Quantum Minerals' revised guidance range of 175,000 to 185,000 tonnes, after the S3 expansion circuit achieved 90% of its design capacity within five months of initial production and was declared at commercial production in December 2025.

The copper price rose 41% during the same twelve months, from USD 9,177 per tonne in January 2025 to USD 12,950 per tonne, meaning Kansanshi produced more copper at a materially higher price per tonne than in any recent prior year simultaneously, the commercial combination that mining investors spend years waiting for and seldom experience at the same time.

The improvement at Kansanshi fed directly through to ZCCM-IH. Royalty earnings from the miner’s 20% economic interest climbed, driving most of the growth in the state firm’s company-level investment income to ZMW 3.38 billion from ZMW 2.42 billion.

The S3 circuit is a third sulphide processing circuit added to an open-pit copper mine that has been operating since 2005 in Solwezi, North-Western Province, one of Zambia's longest-continuously-producing copper operations and the mine that, together with the Sentinel operation in the same province, has made First Quantum Minerals the dominant operator in Zambia's copper production landscape.

S3's delivery was the primary production recovery instrument for a mining company whose Cobre Panamá mine was suspended by government action in late 2023, removing approximately 300,000 tonnes of annual copper production from the company's portfolio and requiring Zambia to carry a substantially higher proportion of First Quantum's global output.

First Quantum's full-year 2025 copper production was 396,000 tonnes, 35,000 tonnes lower than 2024 but within the revised guidance range of 390,000 to 410,000 tonnes, with Sentinel recording an 18% decline due to lower ore grades while Kansanshi's S3 production provided partial offset. The S3 commissioning on time and on budget was the operational achievement that justifies the confidence First Quantum's management expressed in Zambia as a jurisdiction for continued capital investment.

First Quantum expects Kansanshi copper production to range between 175,000 and 205,000 tonnes in 2026, between 210,000 and 240,000 tonnes in 2027, and between 230,000 and 260,000 tonnes in 2028, with the step-up underpinned by S3 feed transitioning from low-grade stockpiles to higher-grade fresh ore from the South East Dome deposit from 2027 onward.

Moving from 170,929 tonnes in 2025 toward 245,000 tonnes in 2028 at current copper prices represents an annualised royalty income uplift for ZCCM-IH of approximately USD 19 million from Kansanshi alone, more than the entire operating profit that Zambeef generated across its first half of the same period.

Zambia produced 890,346 metric tonnes of copper in 2025 according to official Mines Ministry data, the second consecutive year of growth and a new national record, though it fell short of the government's one million tonne target. The sector accounts for roughly 15% of GDP and generates more than 70% of export revenue.

At 890,346 tonnes and an average 2025 LME copper price of approximately USD 10,400 per tonne, Zambia’s gross copper export value in 2025 was about USD 9.26 billion against a national GDP of approximately USD 30 billion. The higher average price, versus USD 9,500 previously used, reflects the 41% rally in copper during the year from USD 9,177 per tonne in January to USD 12,950 per tonne in December.

The production record's distribution across the operator base tells three distinct variables. Kansanshi delivered 170,929 tonnes, its highest since 2021, driven by S3. Konkola Copper Mine recorded a production surge of 366.58%, reaching 80,215 metric tonnes, driven by Vedanta's cumulative USD 601 million in shareholder loans since 2024 restoring operational continuity after years of deferred maintenance under government administration. Mopani Copper Mines increased output by 40.27% under International Resources Holding, reflecting the same pattern of private sector recapitalisation and commercially disciplined management following government-administered ownership.

Together these three operators form the structural backbone of a copper industry whose government has targeted more than tripling annual production to three million metric tonnes by 2031, a volume that would place Zambia at the centre of the global supply chain for electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and advanced manufacturing.

Here is the corrected CAFCA section of the Kansanshi article, using only confirmed figures from the three results documents provided:

CAFCA Limited, established in 1947, listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange operating as Zimbabwe's only cable manufacturer represents what Zimbabwe's copper economy looks like when the value addition that raw copper production enables is captured domestically rather than exported as concentrate.

The company recorded a revenue growth of USD 39.49 million in 2025, a 56% increase in nominal terms driven primarily by exchange rate effects rather than real volume growth, with real-term revenue declining 3% over the same period. Profit after tax fell 68% from USD 5.8 million to USD 1.9 million as CAFCA absorbed rising input costs rather than passing them to customers in order to defend market position under competitive pressure from imported cables following the implementation of Statutory Instrument 157 of 2024, which permitted competitive products to enter the market under an Open General Import Licence without individual permits.

Volumes fell 8% for the full year, equipment utilisation improved from 70% to 80% through predictive maintenance and operator-driven controls, and the board declared a final dividend of USD 2.80 cents per share, down from USD 4.9 cents in the prior year.

The recovery from that FY2025 compression has been confirmed across two subsequent reporting periods. For the first quarter ended 31 December 2025, CAFCA recorded a 3% year-on-year increase in total sales volumes, with copper-based products recovering 21% despite a 25% decline in aluminium volumes. Production volumes increased 13% year-on-year. Export volumes surged 77% following the restructuring of the distribution model and the discontinuation of the consignment stock system. Domestic market share stood at 49% in 2025, down from approximately 60% previously, reflecting the ongoing competitive pressure from imports that SI 157 of 2024 facilitated.

For the six months ended 31 March 2026, revenue grew 24% to USD 22.2 million from USD 17.9 million in the same period of the prior year. Profit after tax reached USD 1.8 million, a 211% increase from USD 0.6 million, with operating profit growing from USD 0.13 million to USD 2.6 million, a disproportionate improvement reflecting the operating leverage inherent in a manufacturing business with significant fixed costs.

Overall volumes grew 14% year-on-year, supported by a 16% recovery in copper volumes and 10% in aluminium volumes. Export volumes grew 109%, with export markets in Malawi, Rwanda, and Mozambique contributing USD 1.6 million of total revenue. The retail segment grew 37% while the utility segment declined 17%, attributed to liquidity constraints within the sector rather than competitive displacement. Basic earnings per share rose 213% to USD 0.0539 from USD 0.0172 on the same weighted average share count of 33,949,000 shares.

The electrolysis plant that generates approximately 10 tonnes of 99.99% pure copper sheets monthly, CAFCA's most direct form of local value addition and its partial insulation from imported raw material dependency is the operational asset that most precisely locates the company's position in Zimbabwe's copper economy, downstream from mining, upstream from the construction, utilities, and industrial customers whose cable requirements define the demand base.

The energy constraint is the operational vulnerability whose confirmed scale the financial results understate. CAFCA lost 324 production hours to voltage fluctuations in the first quarter ended 31 December 2025, more than three times the 99 hours lost in the prior comparative period despite recording no outages. Voltage fluctuations are more damaging to cable manufacturing than outages because the precision of drawing, annealing, and extruding copper conductor at consistent gauge and temper specifications requires stable current whose variation produces defective output rather than stopped output.

A machine producing cable at inconsistent voltage draws material that must be scrapped or reworked, consuming copper at global commodity prices and eroding the first-pass yield improvements that CAFCA's quality programme has been building. The 324 hours lost in a single quarter, at the half-year revenue run rate of USD 22.2 million for six months and approximately 4,368 production hours per half year, represent approximately USD 1.6 million in unrealised revenue, equivalent to almost the entire profit after tax for the half year ended 31 March 2026.

The same voltage fluctuation figure is confirmed in the H1 FY2026 results, where the 324-hour loss is identified as a significant operational deterioration. The solar plant commissioned in March 2026, which is expected to contribute 30% of CAFCA's power requirements going forward and is financed by a USD 1 million facility at 11% per annum over 36 months, addresses supply availability rather than grid quality. The voltage fluctuation challenge persists as a grid stability problem independent of how much solar generation supplements the supply.

The Copper Value Chain: What Zambia Captures and What Zimbabwe Captures

Kansanshi and CAFCA sit at opposite ends of the copper value chain, and the distance between them isn’t a corporate performance story, but a study in what two neighbouring countries, both endowed with copper geology and both operating in the same global copper price environment, have built on either side of the extraction-to-manufacture divide, and what the difference reveals about the policy, infrastructure, and capital conditions that determine how much of the commodity's value a country retains.

Kansanshi is upstream. It extracts copper from the ground, processes it through a smelter, and exports refined anode and concentrate. In 2025 it produced 170,929 tonnes of copper, approximately 14,244 tonnes per month, at a copper price that rose from USD 9,177 to USD 12,950 per tonne during the year, generating approximately USD 2.21 billion in gross copper revenue from a single mine in Solwezi. First Quantum Minerals invested over USD 1 billion in the S3 Expansion circuit that produced first concentrate in August 2025 and declared commercial production in December 2025.

Royal Gold provided a USD 1 billion streaming transaction against Kansanshi's gold by-product in August 2025. Vedanta committed USD 601 million in recapitalisation loans to Konkola Copper Mines. Capital flows into Zambia's copper sector at that scale because the regulatory clarity, the grid stability, the infrastructure, and the fiscal framework make billion-dollar long-cycle mining investments commercially rational.

CAFCA is downstream. It does not mine copper. It buys copper rod and sheet, draws it, anneals it, extrudes it, and manufactures cables for the construction, utility, mining, and industrial sectors across Zimbabwe and selected SADC export markets. Its electrolysis plant generates approximately 10 tonnes of 99.99% pure copper sheet per month, local value addition of the highest purity standard, produced in Harare rather than exported as concentrate.

Its confirmed full-year FY2025 revenue was USD 39.49 million, H1 FY2026 revenue was USD 22.2 million, growing 24% year-on-year with profit after tax rising 211% to USD 1.8 million. Export volumes grew 109% in the half year following the distribution model restructuring that replaced the consignment-stock system with direct orders, unlocking genuine regional demand from customers in Malawi, Rwanda, and Mozambique.

These are two different industries at two different points in the same metal's journey from ore body to finished product. The mine's gross output will always exceed the manufacturer's revenue at this stage of the value chain, and placing USD 2.21 billion against USD 39 million as if they measure comparable activities misrepresents what each number describes. The comparison that matters is what each country has built to receive the same copper price signal and convert it into economic output, employment, export revenue, and fiscal return.

Zambia's answer is 890,346 tonnes of copper production in 2025, a national record, driven by investments numbered in billions, structured across multiple global operators, and expanding toward a government target of three million tonnes annually by 2031. At USD 12,950 per tonne, the copper price flows into Zambia as royalty income to ZCCM-IH, corporate income tax to Treasury, foreign exchange earnings across 70% of export revenue, and capital returns on the USD 601 million invested by private shareholders in Mopani and Konkola's recapitalisation.

Kansanshi's S3 circuit, achieving 90% of design capacity within five months of first production, confirms that the investment environment continues to attract the capital scale that converts geological endowment into production at national economic significance.

Zimbabwe's answer is 10 tonnes per month of electrolytic copper sheet at 99.99% purity, USD 39.49 million in annual cable revenue from the country's sole cable manufacturer, a domestic market share of 49% under competitive pressure from imports admitted under SI 157 of 2024, and 324 production hours lost in a single quarter to voltage fluctuations on a grid whose instability the company's newly commissioned solar plant, contributing 30% of power requirements from March 2026, does not resolve, because voltage fluctuation is a grid quality problem rather than a supply availability problem.

At the copper price that generated USD 2.21 billion in gross revenue for a single Zambian mine, Zimbabwe's cable manufacturer reported USD 22.2 million for a full half year. CAFCA's 211% profit increase is real, its operating leverage is genuine, and its export recovery is structural. The scale difference is not a CAFCA failure. It reflects what Zimbabwe's policy environment, power infrastructure, and capital market architecture have made possible at the manufacturing stage of the copper value chain.

Chile's Codelco mines copper at a scale that defines global supply, while Chilean wire and cable manufacturers convert that copper into finished electrical products. The upstream asset does not make the downstream manufacturer redundant. They are complementary stages in the same value chain whose national policy environment determines how much of each stage is retained domestically.

Zambia has built the upstream at scale, Zimbabwe has maintained the downstream at the only scale its operating environment currently supports. The energy transition's copper demand, for electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, data centres, and grid expansion, will sustain elevated copper prices for the decade ahead. What each country captures from that demand will be determined by the same policy variables that produced the current gap,  regulatory clarity, grid stability, capital framework, and infrastructure investment whose presence or absence is the difference between 890,346 tonnes per year and 120 tonnes per year of processed copper output.

Equity Axis News