Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines, according to recent figures released, is projected to grow even bigger than it currently is.
According to media reports, the updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) puts the combined Kamoa-Kakula project at 423m tonnes grading 4.68% copper, at a 3% cut off. Indicated mineral resource, in turn, now stands at 1.4Bn tonnes grading 2.7% copper, at a 1% cut-off.
The 400 square kilometre mining concession comprises two large, near-surface, flat-lying, stratiform copper deposits. One of them, Kakula, is being fast-tracked to commercial production. Furthermore, the initial 3.8-million-tonne-a-year mining operation scheduled to produce first concentrate in the third quarter of 2021.
Indicated mineral resources at the Kamoa deposit, discovered by Ivanhoe geologists in 2008, now total 760m tonnes grading 2.73% copper, containing 45.8Bn pounds of copper. This means that Kamoa’s indicated copper content increased by 15.5%, owing mostly to drilling a targeted higher-grade mineralization in the northern part of deposit — North Bonanza.
In a statement from the Company’s vice president George Gilchrist, there is an opportunity to add further shallow, higher-grade copper resources in the northern portion of the mining licence.
Ivanhoe has been working on Kamoa-Kakula for more than ten years. In 2015, China’s Zijin Mining Group got on board, becoming Ivanhoe’s partner in the project. Citic Metal, another Chinese firm, followed suit in 2018, becoming Ivanhoe’s top shareholder.
Once fully developed, the mining complex in the DRC could produce 382,000 tonnes of copper a year during the first 10 years. This will be an uptake of 318,000 tonnes after 12 years of operations.
