By: Reuters

Global miner BHP BHP.AX is keen to pursue large-scale copper exploration in Zambia, the country's mines ministry said on Monday, highlighting growing international interest in the central African nation's mineral wealth, as surging demand for the metal reshapes global mining priorities.

Zambia, Africa's second-largest copper producer after Democratic Republic of Congo, is seeking to more than triple output by 2031 and is stepping up efforts to attract investment into its largely underexplored deposits.

BHP has largely stayed out of Africa since spinning off South32 S32.AX in 2015. Its brief investment in Tanzania's Kabanga Nickel project was its only significant foray before exiting last year. Its 2024 bid for Anglo American collapsed partly because it refused to take on Anglo's South African operations.

However, BHP is now re-engaging with the region. The company on April 15 said it launched a series of exploration workshops across southern Africa, covering Zambia, South Africa, Namibia and Angola through early May.

In a statement shared via social media, Zambia's mines ministry on Monday said BHP is increasingly targeting large copper deposits that are difficult to detect using traditional exploration methods, citing comments from Campbell McCuaig, the company's head of global generative exploration, during meetings in Lusaka.

"Many of the remaining large deposits are either deeply buried or hidden beneath geological cover," McCuaig said, adding that BHP is deploying advanced geological methods and large-scale data analysis to detect "mineral systems" - the geological processes that form major copper deposits.

McCuaig welcomed Zambia's efforts to expand access to geoscience data, including government-backed airborne surveys and the digitisation of geological records, saying this would help attract international investment.

Zambia remains one of the world's most prospective regions for copper, and ongoing reforms are aimed at translating that potential into higher production and economic growth, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Clara Denina in London and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo in Johannesburg; Editing by Louise Heavens)