Trade house Mercuria has delivered 12,000 metric tons of copper from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Project Vault, the US government’s critical minerals reserve, this week, Mercuria’s global head of metals told a conference on Thursday.
Announced in February by US President Donald Trump, Project Vault aims to stockpile critical minerals and alleviate supply crunches for a range of manufacturers that have for years been overly reliant on Chinese supplies.
“Copper from the DRC has gone into the vault this week,” Kostas Bintas told the FT Metals and Mining Summit in London.
Mercuria is one of the project’s anchor investors, Bintas said. The trading house announced a $500 million commitment to Project Vault in September.
Project Vault aims to combine $2 billion in private funding with a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank.
Bintas said the shipment formed part of a broader commitment by Congo.
Congo’s state miner Gecamines said in January it would ship 100,000 tons of copper from its 20% share of production at the Tenke Fungurume mine to the US in 2026, with financial and logistical support from Mercuria.
“Now this copper finds its way not only to the United States, but to the Strategic Reserve Initiative of the United States,” Bintas said. “So a lot of policy initiatives started to work, started to have real effects on the market.”
(Reporting by Polina Devitt; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
