35-476: (Redirected from Union Miniere ) Union Minière can refer to: Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK), a mining company operating in Africa prior to 1966 Umicore , a Belgian metals company and successor to UMHK, which traded as Union Minière prior to 1999 Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
70-593: A virtual monopoly of the world uranium market (holding most of the deposits known at the time), to be broken only by the German invasion of 1940. This uranium was mostly refined at Olen , Belgium. In 1939 , Frédéric Joliot-Curie , head of the French newly established Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), arranged for the UMHK to provide his organization with 5 tonnes of uranium oxide, technical assistance with
105-468: The Atlantic , saves hundreds of rail miles, thousands of nautical miles for Katanga copper on its long journey to European markets . During its years of operation, the UMHK greatly contributed to the wealth of Belgium, and, to a lesser extent, Katanga—which developed more than the surrounding regions without similar mineral resources. The company could be considered harshly capitalistic, but its motto at
140-670: The Cape to Cairo Railway (connecting the city of Kindu (DRC) to the city of Port Elizabeth in South Africa). The line terminates at the port of Lobito on the Atlantic coast, from where Angola exports a wide variety of products, including minerals (from the Copperbelt region), food, industrial components and livestock. The section from Lobito to Luau is run by the Empresa do Caminho de Ferro de Benguela-E.P. It crosses
175-871: The Lobito Atlantic Railway company secured a 30-year concession for railway services. This joint venture involved Trafigura , a Singapore-based company, Mota-Engil , headquartered in Portugal, and Vecturis SA, a Belgium-based rail operator. The concession agreement encompassed the entire 1,300km railway line in Angola, extending to the 400km line into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (up to Kolwezi ), and also includes any potential service extensions in Zambia. To support their operations,
210-587: The Luao River , which lies on the border, to Dilolo (DRC) . From there to Tenke, the railway is operated by the Société nationale des Chemins de fer du Congo . The railway is Cape gauge , 1,067 mm ( 3 ft 6 in ), which is used by most mainline railways in southern Africa. The maximum design speed is 90 km per hour. The design capacity is 20 million tons of cargo and 4 million passengers per year. There are 67 stations and 42 bridges along
245-550: The Manhattan Project , Nichols purchased the 1500 tonnes of uranium (mostly mined at Shinkolobwe mine, near the town of Jadotville ) the project required. This was already in the United States, and additional ore was shipped from the Congo. The mine had a "tremendously rich lode of uranium pitchblende . Nothing like it has ever again been found"; the ore was 65% uranium and even the waste piles were 20%; "after
280-648: The Ruashi Mine , owned by the UMHK, began operation, supplying 997 tonnes of copper on its first year. By 1919, annual production had risen to 22,000 tonnes, produced by seven furnaces. In 1935, the Union was party to the World Copper Agreement . One of its prominent figure were Belgian financier and lawyer Felicien Cattier and businessman Emile Francqui . In the 1950s, Congo was the world’s fourth largest copper-producing country. In addition to
315-471: The 1989 merger that created what in 2001 became known as Umicore . Benguela Railway The Benguela Railway ( Portuguese : Caminho de Ferro de Benguela (CFB) ) is a Cape gauge railway line that runs through Angola from west to east, being the largest and most important railway line in the country. It also connects to Tenke in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) , and to
350-482: The Congo. On 31 December 1966, the Congolese government, under President Joseph-Désiré Mobutu , took over the possessions and activities of the UMHK, transforming it into Gécamines (Société générale des Carrières et des Mines), a state-owned mining company. Mismanagement and failure to adopt modern standards of mining (rather than mining depletion), as well as outright theft by Mobutu, meant that mining production
385-412: The UMHK supported Tshombe and became a major force within the new state, and still allowed for Belgian and international control. During the province's secession, the Union transferred 1.25 billion Belgian francs (35 million USD) into Tshombe's bank account, an advance on 1960 taxes which should in fact have been paid to Lumumba's government . In 1963, the secession was ended and Katanga reintegrated into
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#1732772015268420-522: The UN intervene in Congo's Katanga crisis after a call for intervention by prime minister Lumumba. Björkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash near the border of the DRC with Zambia , and on archival documents. In 1968, UMHK was reorganized following the nationalization of its Congolese assets, with its name shortened as Union Minière. It kept operating under that name until after
455-572: The Union Miniere were in excess of 3.5 billion Belgian francs , and export duties paid to the Congolese government constituted 50% of the government's revenue. There were times when the Belgian colony's tax on the UMHK accounted for up to 66% of its revenues. It is reported that in 1960, the UMHK had annual sales of $ 200 million USD, had produced 60 percent of the uranium in the West, 73 percent of
490-568: The border to the Belgian Congo was completed in 1929. The primary purpose was to facilitate export trade, while "the domestic Angolan traffic would be of secondary importance." Passenger trains also ran between Lubumbashi and Lobito, connecting with passenger ship services to Europe. This provided a shorter route for Europeans working in the Katangan and Zambian Copperbelt, and the name "Benguela Railway", or also "Katanga-Benguela railway",
525-564: The cobalt, and 10 percent of the copper, and had in the Congo 24 affiliates including hydroelectric plants, chemical factories and railways. The Belgian Congo became independent in June 1960. After a brief period of political unrest, Katanga Province seceded unilaterally from the Congo to form the State of Katanga under Moïse Tshombe . Fearing that the Congo's left-leaning political leaders, especially Patrice Lumumba , would nationalise its holdings,
560-446: The company committed to investing US$ 455,000,000 in Angola and up to US$ 100,000,000 in the DRC. The awarding of the concessions took place in the presence of Presidents João Lourenço of Angola, Félix Tshisekedi of the DRC, and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia. Expected to operate at least 1555 wagons and 30 locomotives in Angola, an initial 275 wagons were ordered by contract from South Africa in June 2024. Operations launched at
595-554: The company that in 2001 renamed itself Umicore . Cheap copper has no terrors for the great Mid-African mines of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, world's biggest producer... Elements in Katanga's strength are: tremendously rich ores ; cheap native labor ; big production of cobalt and radium (over 82%, of world radium supply) on the side; and, most recent, the newly opened Benguela Railway , which connects Katanga with
630-531: The construction of a reactor and a million francs, in exchange for having all discoveries made by the CNRS patented by a syndicate, with profits shared between the CNRS and the UMHK. This uranium oxide was transferred to England before German troops entered Paris. The United States of America obtained uranium for the atomic bomb from the Union Minière. At a meeting on 18 September 1942 between Edgar Sengier , head of UMHK, and United States General Kenneth Nichols of
665-487: The copper for which it is known, Katanga was also rich in other minerals. The company controlled the exports of cobalt (the UMHK was responsible for 75 percent of world production during the 1950s), tin , uranium and zinc in its mines, among the richest in the world. Henri Buttgenbach , a famous Belgian metallurgist and administrator of UMHK from 1911, described cornetite , fourmarierite , cuprosklodowskite and thoreaulite . The finding of radium deposits in Katanga at
700-474: The early 1970s, the railway was operated entirely by steam locomotives, oil-fired from the coast to Cubal, and then wood-fired from Cubal to the interior. Wood was supplied by eucalyptus trees grown on company-owned tree plantations . Steam locomotives outnumbered diesels as late as 1987. Soon after Angola gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, the Angolan Civil War broke out. The railway
735-894: The railway was reconstructed between 2006 and 2014 by the China Railway Construction Corporation at a cost of $ 1.83 billion. 100,000 Angolans were employed on the railway reconstruction. Trains reached Huambo in 2011, Kuito in 2012, and Luau near the Congolese border in 2013. The rebuilt railway was formally inaugurated in February 2015. According to Jornal de Angola in May 2012, Empresa do Caminho de Ferro de Benguela-E.P. employed 1,321 workers, and transported 129,430 passengers and 5,640 tons of goods in 2011. Two trains per day run between Lobito and Benguela, one per week to Huambo, and three per week between Lobito and Cubal . On 5 March 2018, ore transport
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#1732772015268770-558: The route of the railway. The highest point on the railway is 1,854 metres (6,083 ft). The railway line roughly follows old trade routes between the ancient trading centre of Benguela and its hinterland of the Bié plateau. In 1899, the Portuguese government initiated the construction of the railway to give access to the central Angolan plateau and the mineral wealth of the then Congo Free State . A concession, running for 99 years,
805-443: The same time eventually led to a Belgian radium-extracting industry. Johannes Franciscus Vaes , who has studied minerals coming from the UMHK, is responsible for the discovery of billietite, masuyite , renierite, richetite, schuilingite-(Nd), sengierite, studtite and vandendriesscheite. Gaston Briart , after whom Briartite is named, was a UMHK consultant. In 1922, the UMHK built its first refinery for uranium ore, and by 1926 had
840-691: The time, best expressing their opinion of development was "good health, good spirits, and high productivity." Possibly it was because of this approach, and in order to keep and placate the workforce, that the Union introduced an accident compensation scheme as early as 1928. Katanga's mineral wealth led to the construction of railways (including the Benguela railway ) to connect it with the Angolan coast which took place in 1911, other rail lines connected Katanga to Northern Rhodesia . Thereafter, mineral production, especially of copper, took off. For instance, in 1911,
875-571: The title Union Minière . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Union_Minière&oldid=1183002068 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Union Mini%C3%A8re du Haut Katanga The Union Minière du Haut-Katanga ( French ; literally "Mining Union of Upper-Katanga")
910-729: The war the MED and the AEC considered ore containing three tenths of 1 percent as a good find". Some 1200 tonnes of uranium stored at the Olen refinery were captured by the Germans in 1940, and only recovered by US troops at the end of the war. During its heyday, the UMHK held quasi governmental power in Katanga , and operated schools, dispensaries, hospitals and sporting establishments, and had enjoyed virtually unlimited funds. In 1959, Belgian profits from
945-549: Was 90% owned by Tanganyika Concessions (Tanks), a London-based holding company. Société Générale de Belgique purchased a minority share in Tanks in 1923 and acquired a controlling interest in 1981. The Belgian company remained the controlling owner of the railway when the concession expired in 2001, at which point ownership of the railway passed to the Angolan government. After the Angolan Civil War ended in 2002,
980-649: Was a Belgian mining company (with minority British share) which controlled and operated the mining industry in the copperbelt region in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1906 and 1966. Created in 1906, the UMHK was founded as a joint venture of the Belgian Compagnie du Katanga , the Belgian Comité Spécial du Katanga and the British Tanganyika Concessions . The Compagnie du Katanga
1015-601: Was a subsidiary of the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (CCCI), which was controlled by the country's largest conglomerate, the Société Générale de Belgique . With the support of the colonial state , the company was allocated a 7,700 square miles (20,000 km ) concession in Katanga . Its primary product was copper, but it also produced tin , cobalt , radium , uranium , zinc , cadmium , germanium , manganese , silver , and gold . UMHK
1050-433: Was granted to Sir Robert Williams on 28 November 1902. His Benguela Railway Company took over the construction which commenced on 1 March 1903. Messrs Pauling & Co. and Messrs Griffiths & Co were contracted to build sections of the railway. By 1914, when World War I started, 500 kilometres (310 mi) had been completed. Construction was halted until 1920 after which the railway's connection to Luau at
1085-536: Was greatly reduced, with production rate sinking as much as 70%. Those assets of UMHK not seized by Mobutu were absorbed by the Société Générale de Belgique, later becoming part of Union Minière (now Umicore ). Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed that the death of the-then United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarsköld had made
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1120-472: Was heavily damaged during the war and progressively fell into disuse. The workshops in Huambo were destroyed. Ballast cars had to be coupled to the front of locomotives to detonate mines. By 1992, only 340 km (210 mi) of the railway remained in operation. When the 99-year concession expired in 2001, only 34 km (21 mi) remained in service, along the coast from Benguela to Lobito. The railway
1155-545: Was part of a powerful group of global copper producers . By the start of World War II , the Société Générale controlled 70% of the Congolese economy. Exercising preponderant influence over the Comité spécial , the Société Générale effectively controlled the Union Minière from its inception to 1960. In 1968, the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga reorganized as Union Minière , which merged in 1989 with other entities to form
1190-587: Was restarted from the Tenke Fungurume Mine , in the DRC, from where copper and cobalt are extracted, and the cargo transported to the port of Lobito . From that date the railway went into full operation, connecting the city of Tenke to the city of Lobito. In April 2023 the Angolan government confirmed funding to build a new 260km railway from Luena on the Benguela Railway to Saurimo, the capital of Lunda Sul province. On July 4, 2023,
1225-620: Was sometimes used loosely to refer to the entire Lubumbashi–Lobito route, rather than the Tenke–Lobito section to which it strictly applies. In its heyday, the Benguela Railway was the shortest way to transport mineral riches from the Congo to Europe. The line proved very successful and profitable, especially in the early 1970s after Zambia closed its border with the then Rhodesia . The railway reached an operational peak in 1973 when it transported 3.3 million tons of cargo, generated freight revenues of $ 30 million, and had 14,000 employees. Until
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