Working on part of the 397-square-kilometre Kamoa-Kakula mining licence, Ivanhoe says it has delineated two new, continuous corridors of shallow copper mineralisation containing zones of thick, high-grade copper that extend for at least 9km, before swinging to the north-west.
It projected the mineralised trend to continue onto the adjoining 100%-owned Western Foreland exploration licences, where the company also recently announced the third major copper discovery in the region.
The second corridor trended west-southwest, away from the barren Kamoa Dome feature and toward the West Scarp Fault, over 3-4km, the company said.
"Our latest exploration success, at Kamoa North, provides additional options for mine planning and sequencing at Kamoa-Kakula," executive chairman Robert Friedland said.
"The unparalleled strength and continuity of the high-grade mineralised trends on the Kamoa-Kakula project also bode well for the potential for further success right next door, on Ivanhoe's 700-square-kilometre Western Foreland exploration licences, north and west of Kamoa-Kakula."
Among the exploration highlights were hole DD1396, which intersected 18.26m (true width) of 5.73% copper, at a 1% copper cut-off, and 17.27m (true width) of 5.98% copper at a 2% copper cut-off, from a depth of 233.6m.
Hole DD1382 intersected 8.05m (true width) of 4.45% copper, at a 1.0% copper cut-off, and 7.55m (true width) of 4.66% copper at a 2% copper cut-off, from a downhole depth of 199.5m.
The discovery of the new zones at Kamoa North is said to clearly demonstrate Kamoa-Kakula's remarkable potential to significantly increase the project's current copper resources. Kamoa-Kakula already is the world's fourth-largest copper discovery on the planet in terms of contained copper.
"What our mining engineers find particularly attractive about the Kamoa North discovery is that the copper mineralisation is thick, flat lying and relatively shallow. The high-grade copper also is generally bottom-loaded, similar to our earlier Kakula and Makoko discoveries, and should be ideally suited to mining at elevated copper cut-off grades," Friedland said.
The Kamoa-Kakula project is a joint venture between Ivanhoe Mines, Zijin Mining and the DRC government.
Friedland stressed that Ivanhoe and Zijin were firmly committed to fast-tracking Kamoa-Kakula's first mining operation at Kakula.
"Based on the findings of the independent preliminary economic assessment completed a year ago, the resources we've discovered at Kakula should allow Ivanhoe and Zijin to build a world-scale, highly-mechanised, underground copper mine producing at an initial mining rate of six million tonnes a year, and potentially amenable to subsequent stages of phased mine expansions up to 18 million tonnes a year, and beyond."
Ivanhoe (TSX:IVN) gained 5.65% to C$2.62 in Toronto on Wednesday, but is still down 46% from its peak of $5.01 a year ago. The company has a market value of $2.7 billion.
