Union Minière du Haut-Katanga
Its primary product was copper, but it also produced tin, cobalt, radium, uranium, zinc, cadmium, germanium, manganese, silver, and gold.
[4] Exercising preponderant influence over the Comité spécial, the Société Générale effectively controlled the Union Minière from its inception to 1960.
Cheap copper has no terrors for the great Mid-African mines of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, world's biggest producer...
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.
Johannes Franciscus Vaes, who has studied minerals coming from the UMHK, is responsible for the discovery of billietite, masuyite, renierite, richetite, schuilingite-(Nd), sengierite, studtite and vandendriesscheite.
[10][4]: 186–187, 217 During its heyday, the UMHK held quasi governmental power in Katanga, and operated schools, dispensaries, hospitals and sporting establishments, and had enjoyed virtually unlimited funds.
Fearing that the Congo's left-leaning political leaders, especially Patrice Lumumba, would nationalise its holdings, the UMHK supported Tshombe and became a major force within the new state, and still allowed for Belgian and international control.
[11] During the province's secession, the Union transferred 1.25 billion Belgian francs (35 million USD) into Tshombe's bank account, an advance on 1960 taxes which should in fact have been paid to Lumumba's government.
Those assets of UMHK not seized by Mobutu were absorbed by the Société Générale de Belgique, later becoming part of Union Minière (now Umicore).
Göran Björkdahl (a Swedish aid worker) wrote in 2011 that he believed that the death of the-then United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was a murder committed in part to benefit mining companies like Union Minière, after Hammarsköld had made the UN intervene in Congo's Katanga crisis after a call for intervention by prime minister Lumumba.
