Sentinel mine


The Sentinel mine is a large copper mine located in north-west Zambia in North-Western Province.
The mine is owned and operated by Canadian-based First Quantum Minerals, which purchased the rights to the project in 2010, Construction began in June 2012, and the first product was extracted in August 2015, though full scale production did not begin until November 2016. The mine cost about $2.3 billion to build, and employs about 1,800 people.
Sentinel mine has a single reserve of copper ore, measuring an estimated 1.03 billion tons of ore with a copper content of 0.51%, or about 5.2 million tons of pure copper. It is expected to yield about 300,000 tons of copper concentrate annually over a 15-year productive lifespan.