By Franz WildAug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Anvil Mining Ltd., the...

By Franz Wild

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Anvil Mining Ltd., the Australian copper and cobalt producer, has been unable to start mining its Mutoshi concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province because small-scale miners remain on the property.

Anvil needs to dig a mine on the concession to help attain its stated aim of more than doubling copper production to 100,000 metric tons a year by 2010.

``We cannot start work there, because we cannot work with the small-scale miners,'' Charles Kyona, Anvil's deputy country manager, said today in an interview from the provincial capital Lubumbashi in southern Congo.

The previous concession for the area was given by the central African country's state-owned copper miner Gecamines to Lubumbashi-based Chemaf SPRL. Chemaf bought around 700 tons of copper ore from the 3,000 miners working there every month, according to Hubert Musinde, Chemaf's deputy manager at Kolwezi, near Matoshi. Chemaf paid Gecamines half the profit it received from the operation.

Chemaf is refusing to leave, saying that it should have been given first right of refusal when Gecamines passed on the concession to Anvil, Musinde said. Chemaf was awarded the ``inaccessible'' Kapamba concession 220 kilometers (137 miles) away as a substitute, he added.

``We will only leave when we have another suitable site,'' he said. ``We need to relocate all the miners. There is no road to the new site and no bridges over the river.''

Gecamines hasn't commented on the situation, and calls to Managing Director Paul Fortin's cell phone weren't answered.

Anvil has identified a cobalt deposit at Mutoshi in an area not occupied by small-scale miners, according to the company's Web site. The deposit is near Kolwezi, 300 kilometers northwest of Lubumbashi.

Congo has a tenth of the world's copper reserves and a third of its cobalt. Kolwezi is home to Congo's three biggest copper and cobalt projects, run by Nikanor Plc., Freeport- McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and Katanga Mining Ltd.

To contact the reporter on this story: Franz Wild in Kinshasa via the Johannesburg bureau on [email protected]