The Kamoa North prospect area has delivered an “unprecedented” 22.3-m intersection of 13.05% copper in a thick, flat-lying deposit, sending Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines share price up 10% on the TSX on Wednesday.
The new drill hole at the Democratic Republic of Congo-based project includes grades of up to 40% copper and is within 190 m of the surface. At a cutoff grade of 5% copper, the intersection is 15.92% copper over 16.8 m. Using a cutoff grade of 1%, the intersection is 10.29% copper over 29.4 m.
“DD1450 exceeds anything previously encountered in all of our years of delineating resources on this project,” said Ivanhoe co-chairperson Robert Friedland.
“The flat-lying, 10% copper intersection in hole DD1450 is almost 30 m, or 100-feet thick – essentially equivalent to a ten-storey building – and the high-grade copper is less than 200 m below surface. If we apply a 5% copper cutoff to the intersection, the grade increases to approximately 16% copper and it’s still almost 17 m thick, or approximately 56 feet,” he explained.
Hole DD1450 is three times richer on a copper-grade-times-thickness measurement than any previous hole drilled at Kamoa-Kakula, where drilling started more than a decade ago.
The new drill hole is about 18 km north of the Kamoa-Kakula project’s planned initial mine at the Kakula deposit and about 8 km north of Kaoma’s Kansoko mine development.
Ivanhoe’s share price gained 10% to C$2.63 a share in Toronto.