A Turkish-led mining group says it wants to do something Congo-Brazzaville has rarely managed: turn its own iron ore into finished steel on home soil, rather than shipping the raw rock abroad.
A 2-Million-Tonne Steel Bet for Pointe-Noire
Ulsan Holding, working through its local arm Ulsan Mining Congo, plans to build an iron-to-steel processing plant inside the Loango Special Economic Zone in Pointe-Noire. Company figures put the site’s output at roughly two million tonnes of steel per year.
The pitch is straightforward. Instead of selling iron ore as a low-value export, the firm wants to refine it locally and capture far more of the value chain. That ambition, if delivered, would mark a real shift in how the Republic of the Congo treats its mineral wealth.
“We are currently carrying out work to add value to the iron ore we hold in Congo,” said managing director Oguzhan Odabasi. “The aim is to produce steel on site, in order to significantly increase the added value of the Congolese mining sector, rather than limiting ourselves to exporting raw ore.”
Why the Loango Project Matters for Jobs
For Pointe-Noire households, the headline number is employment. The company estimates the plant could generate around 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, concentrated in the coastal economic hub. For a city where industrial work is prized, that figure carries weight.
Beyond the factory floor, the firm expects ripple effects across the wider economy. It points to higher exports and the gradual build-up of an industrial cluster around steelmaking, the kind of supplier network that tends to follow a large processing site once it is running.
Whether the jobs arrive at that scale will depend on execution. Big industrial promises in the region have a history of arriving slowly. Still, the commitment puts a concrete target on the table for residents and local institutions to measure progress against.
A Port and a Railway in the Mix
The plan does not stop at the plant itself. Ulsan Mining Congo says it will also build a dedicated port in Pointe-Noire, developed alongside the Industrial Platform of Congo (PICP), to move and ship the finished steel products once production scales up.
That logistics piece is no afterthought. Heavy industry lives or dies on transport, and steel in particular needs reliable corridors to reach buyers. A dedicated port would give the project a direct outlet to international markets without competing for crowded existing capacity.
The ambition was framed inside formal commitments. Odabasi said the project follows pledges made by the company’s board chairman, Fatih Gulsun, before President Denis Sassou-N’Guesso, in support of local industrialisation. He toured the file alongside delegations from Turkey, Singapore and China.
The Mayoko Mine Behind the Furnace
The steel plant cannot run without ore, and that ore is meant to come from Mayoko. The company describes the Mayoko mining project as well advanced, with mining preparations already completed and the ore-enrichment plant in the final stages of work.
Trial production is expected to begin within a short timeframe, according to the firm. Running in parallel is the rehabilitation of the railway line needed to haul ore from the mine to the coast, the physical backbone linking pit to furnace to port.
That railway matters as much as the plant. Without a functioning corridor between Mayoko and Pointe-Noire, even a finished factory would sit idle. Tying mine, rail and processing into one timeline is the project’s central logistical challenge.
A 30-Year Bet on Local Processing
The current push builds on groundwork laid in 2024. That year, Ulsan Mining Congo signed a 30-year mining agreement with the Congolese state, an unusually long horizon that signals the firm intends to stay rather than extract and exit.
The agreement included rehabilitating the corridor connecting Mayoko to Pointe-Noire, the same artery now central to the steel plan. By bundling infrastructure into the deal, the company tied its commercial future to fixing transport links the wider economy can also use.
The throughline across all of it is local transformation. Refining ore at home, building a port, reviving a railway and committing to three decades on the ground form a single argument: that Congo-Brazzaville’s iron should leave the country as steel, not as rock.
For now, much remains on paper and in trial phases. But the targets are specific, the partners named, and the timeline tied to visible infrastructure. The coming months of trial production at Mayoko should offer the first real test of how much of this ambition becomes industry.