A multibillion-dollar fund that the Trump administration helped launch moved Tuesday to buy mining assets — largely cobalt and copper — in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Orion Critical Mineral Consortium has entered into a nonbinding agreement to acquire 40 percent of Swiss mining giant Glencore’s interest in Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper. The Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, electronics and aerospace superalloys.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corp., or DFC, created the consortium last year with New York-based Orion Resource Partners and Abu Dhabi’s ADQ, an investment and state-owned holding company the United Arab Emirates created in 2018.
The three partners said then they were making an initial capital commitment of $1.8 billion and targeting an eventual pool of $5 billion.
