Union Minière du Haut-Katanga

Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK, lit. 'Mining Union of Upper Katanga') was a mining company active in Belgian Congo and especially its Katanga Province. It controlled and operated the mining industry in the copperbelt region, now part of the 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 Tanganyika Concessions Limited (TCL, also known as "Tanks"). The Compagnie du Katanga in turn was a subsidiary of the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (CCCI). With the support of the colonial state, the company was allocated a 7,700 square miles (20,000 km2) concession in Katanga. Its primary product was copper, but it also produced tin, cobalt, radium, uranium, zinc, cadmium, germanium, manganese, silver, and gold. UMHK was part of a powerful group of global copper producers. By the start of World War II, the Société Générale de Belgique, which controlled about 70 percent of the Congolese economy, exercized preponderant influence over the Comité spécial and effectively controlled the UMHK. In 1968, following nationalization of its Congolese mining operations two years earlier, the UMHK reorganized and rebranded itself as Union Minière (UM). UM in 1989 absorbed other entities and in 2001 renamed itself Umicore.

Colonial era

Copper

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 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, 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.

Other metals In addition to 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 Belgian metallurgist and board member of UMHK from 1911, described cornetite, fourmarierite, cuprosklodowskite and thoreaulite. The finding of radium deposits in Katanga at the same time eventually led to a Belgian radium-extracting industry. In July 1919, UMHK formed the Société Générale Métallurgique d'Hoboken (SGMH) to refine non-ferrous metals, named after the district of Hoboken, Antwerp, where Metallgesellschaft had initially established a plant in 1887. SGMH built a separate facility at Olen that was the first to produce Radium on an industrial basis, based on the findings of Marie Curie. In 1923, the UMHK also established a separate entity named Le Radium Belge to commercialize the production of the Olen plant, initially as a joint venture with the Radium Company of Colorado (RCC), in which UMHK had 60 percent of equity and RCC 40 percent. RCC, however, ceased operations in 1924. Le Radium Belge, led by Gustave Lechien, remained a stand-alone company for some time, but by early 1929 it had been converted into a mere department of UMHK. Johannes F. Vaes, who 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.

Uranium

In 1922, the UMHK built its first refinery for uranium ore, and by 1926 had 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 by the UMHK-controlled Société Générale Métallurgique de Hoboken. 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 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 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 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.

Social policy and influence

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