Apart from owning the high- grade Kamoa copper deposit in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ivanplats is also considering further expansion of its South African project, the Platreef platinum, gold and copper mine on the northern limb of South Africa’s Bushveld Igneous Complex.
Speaking at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba, Africa-focused project developer Ivanplats executive chairperson Robert Friedland will likely give an update on the progress of the company’s projects, which also includes the Kipushi zinc and copper asset, in the DRC, and other assets spread across the DRC, South Africa, Gabon and Australia.
Friedland enthused at last year’s Indaba about the potential of the company’s projects, including “Africa’s largest copper project”, Kamoa.
The company’s 95%-owned Kamoa is situated about 20 km west of the Kolwezi section of the DRC Copperbelt and Friedland said it was larger than Kolwezi.
“The orebody is 22 km long and 12 km wide. It is still open in all the important directions and drilling is continuing around the clock,” Friedland said.
He indicated the mine could have a life of up to 150 years producing at an average rate of about 5-million to 20-million tons a year of copper.
It has not yet been established what he will discuss at this year’s event.
Mining Weekly reported in November last year that three step-out drill holes at Ivanplat’s Platreef project had confirmed a significant expansion of its Flatreef platinum/palladium/ gold/rhodium/nickel/copper deposit.
Friedland and executive exploration VP David Broughton have said in a statement that the drilling targeted a south-west extension to the so-called Flatreef, which was predicted by proprietary, geophysical modelling of high-resolution, airborne gravity data to hold more mineralisation.
Meanwhile, Friedland hopes to list Ivanplats in London following its appearance in Toronto in 2012.
“We hope to bring the company to London, although we are a Canadian company,” Friedland said at a conference in London.