ERG is planning a US$800M overhaul of the DRC asset. 

Comide was commissioned in 2012. The operation is comprised of the Africo and Comide deposits which produced Cu-Co concentrate between 2012 and 2017.  Additional infrastructure includes two dense medium separators and a spiral concentrator, with a designed capacity of 250tpm run-of-mine (ROM) ore.  Until 2017, concentrate was sent to Luita for further processing including heap leaching, agitation leaching and solvent extraction-electrowinning.

According to an October 2023 release from ERG, construction of a new hydrometallurgical facility at Comide will be completed in 2025. Under two initial phases of development, the operation will produce 40ktpy of copper cathode and 7ktpy of cobalt hydroxide.  Output will be doubled in the third phase to 80ktpy copper and 14ktpy cobalt hydroxide. It is thought that the operation has the potential to further expand copper capacity to 120ktpy and cobalt capacity to 21ktpy.

Reports suggest that ERG has signed an agreement with China's ENFI Engineering Corp, a subsidiary of China Minmetals, to support the development of Comide. The agreement between ERG and ENFI was signed during the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on 18 October 2023.

The Comide news comes soon after an October Bloomberg report suggested that DRC state-owned company Gécamines was interested in taking control of some of ERG’s copper-cobalt assets further to claims that ERG has been too slow in developing certain projects. The takeover plans were thought to exclude ERG’s Metalkol and Frontier operations but could relate to Boss Mining, Comide and Kalukundi.