The Company controlled the scale and number of investment projects, reduced the investment budget and implemented measures to increase revenue and reduce costs. Since this year, Chambish Copper Smelter Limited has strictly controlled investment projects from the source. The Company originally planned 22 projects with estimated capital of US$8.28 million, after repeated discussions, strict screening, rigorous review, and optimizing project construction and reducing project costs, final decision was to implement 18 projects, reducing investment by US$2.65 million compared to the original plan.
 

Improved maintenance efficiency and compressed maintenance time to ensure the annual production target. In order to ensure stable and increased production, Chambish Copper Smelter Limited planned an annual overhaul of its pyro-processing system at the beginning of the year, which required a 43-day shutdown. In order to ensure the annual production target, during the overhaul, all departments collaborated, overcame various difficulties such as narrow construction areas, many working surfaces and great difficulties in construction, gave full play to the spirit of excellence, pioneering and innovation, completed the design and construction of missing items independently, and constantly optimized construction processes; during the overhaul, it was found that the high-pressure turbine housing that arrived with repair parts did not have a welded valve base, and the technical staff showed their tactic and welded independently; in the overhaul, it was found that the metal hose was leaking oil and the Company did not have spare parts, so the technical staff improvised and overcame difficulties to achieve innovative repair. With the efforts of all parties, the overhaul of the production system was successfully accepted, and the overhaul of the turbine generator set was successfully completed 7 days ahead of schedule.

 

Financial management achieved positive results by strengthening capital control and reducing the refundable VAT balance. The Company strove to overcome the difficulties in tax refunds, actively responded to unfavourable factors such as the devaluation of the kwacha and fierce competition in the copper concentrate raw material market, increased sales and collection management, accelerated capital recovery, ensured the overall balance of capital supply and demand, effectively reduced the risk of capital breakage and enhanced the ability to resist external risks in the Zambian currency market; actively adopted various tax refund measures, strengthened the management of the kwacha fund plan, accelerated the collection and preparation of various tax refund documents, gradually reduced the balance of tax refundable, calculated exchange gains and losses in real time at the end of each month, conducted timely account processing to effectively cope with losses arising from fluctuations in the Kwacha exchange rate. At the same time, tax agents were engaged to strengthen communication with the Zambia Tax Authority to speed up VAT refunds and increase the amount of cash refunds, resulting in a 36.8% decrease in the total amount of VAT refundable compared to the beginning of the year.

Strictly controlled the receivables and inventory to reduce operational risks. In terms of inventory reduction, Chambish Copper Smelter Limited analyzed and verified whether materials had reached safety stock based on the inventory database already established, and balanced the procurement cycle of raw and auxiliary materials according to the product procurement cycle, so as to guarantee production, lower inventory and reduce capital consumption. At the same time, in accordance with the principle of "production based on sales and mining based on production", the Company controlled the balanced entry of raw materials into the plant, reduced the stock of intermediate materials and process materials with high inventory, and implemented the prioritized use of replaceable inventory materials for production materials to save raw material procurement costs. The Company continued to increase the amount of copper concentrate handled and strengthened the linkage mechanism between production, supply and sales to reduce the backlog of copper concentrate raw materials and copper products and to reduce the capital employed in inventory. In terms of accounts receivable reduction, Chambish Copper Smelter Limited established a comprehensive and efficient credit management system, strengthened the assessment and tracking analysis of customers' solvency, accelerated the progress of final settlement of copper products, provided incentives to logistics companies, requested logistics companies to book shipments as early as possible, formed marine bills of lading, issued invoices and collected payments in a timely manner, recovered the final settlement and provisional settlement as soon as possible, and accelerated capital turnover. As a result, the amount of accounts receivable for the year decreased by nearly 10% year-on-year.