TSX- and OTCQX-listed Ivanhoe Mines has announced a new discovery – the Makoko West extension – in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The discovery, which is part of the company’s Western Forelands prospect, is open along strike westward onto a package of new licences that were acquired in late 2024.

The new licence package expands Ivanhoe’s licence footprint by 20%. Exploration activities started on these new licences prior to the onset of the rainy season, the company explained on February 24.

Drilling has confirmed the continuation of mineralisation stepping further west from the Makoko area, opening up Makoko West, which revealed shallow and high-grade copper mineralisation. As a result, the strike length of the Makoko mineralised district has now increased by 20% to more than 13 km.

The total strike length is comparable to that of the Kakula orebody, the main source of copper ore for the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex’s Phase 1 and 2 concentrators. The western edge of Kakula’s orebody is about 10 km from the eastern edge of the Makoko deposit.

The Western Forelands’ 2024 drilling programme was Ivanhoe’s largest to date, with more than 80 000 m of diamond drilling completed. Drilling was predominantly focused on a potential western extension along the strike of the Makoko deposit, up to the licence area boundary. Drilling was also aimed at expanding the strike of the adjacent Kitoko discovery.

“In 2024, Ivanhoe geologists completed another landmark year across the Western Forelands as we continue to discover more Kamoa-Kakula-style copper mineralisation on our adjacent majority-owned licences.

“Over 80 000 m drilled, far exceeding our original target, reflects not only the achievements of the Ivanhoe exploration team to continue evolving our greenfield exploration methods, particularly through the wet season, but also a step-change in our understanding of the Makoko-Kitoko mineralised system, which continues to grow in scale,” Ivanhoe founder and executive co-chairperson Robert Friedland said.

He noted that Makoko geologically resembles the Kamoa mines during the nascent days of development and that the Makoko deposit was already the fourth-largest copper discovery globally in the past decade when Ivanhoe last published a resource in November 2023.

Friedland said fresh engineering was under way to independently quantify new resource numbers on the rapidly expanding Makoko and Kitoko system in the second quarter.

“The western extension of Makoko is demonstrating high copper grades at shallower depths … potentially a logical place to start mine development activities in the Western Forelands.

“We have also gained significant understanding of the high-grade Kitoko copper discovery, which is geologically very similar to Kakula-style mineralisation. We will leverage our progressive understanding of this new deposit style to explore for additional Kitoko-style high-grade copper discoveries and are now exploring the connectivity between the Makoko and Kitoko horizons,” Friedland said.

The Makoko deposit contains an Indicated mineral resource of 16-million tonnes at 3.55% copper and an inferred mineral resource of 154-million tonnes at 1.97% copper, using a 1.5% copper cutoff.

Makoko currently ranks as the world’s fourth-largest and highest-grade copper discovery since the discovery of Kakula in 2016. Copper mineralisation remains open in several directions, notably to the south, east, and west. The 2024 programme focused primarily on step-out drilling in these various directions.

The Makoko West target is an up-dip, western extension of the Makoko deposit. 37 739 m, or about 50% of total Western Foreland drilling, was conducted around the Makoko West area during 2024. Shallow, high-grade copper mineralisation at Makoko West has been intercepted between 120 m and 300 m from surface, at a thickness of between 5 m and 15 m.

With the addition of Makoko West, the total strike length of the mineralised district has increased by 20% to more than 13 km, which is equivalent to the strike length of the Kakula deposit, located 10 km away.

Copper mineralisation has also been intercepted in a hole between Kakula and Makoko at a depth of about 1 300 m. Despite the hole’s depth, the occurrence of mineralisation shows a possible connection between Kakula West and Makoko across the Nchana Fault. This new mineralised area will be followed up in due course.

Ivanhoe’s geologists say the mineralisation likely continues even further west, outside of the original Western Forelands licence boundary.

As a result, Ivanhoe has acquired an 80% interest in a 336 km² package of new exploration licences located west of Makoko West. The new licences are almost equivalent in size to the entire licence area of the Kamoa-Kakula mining permit area. The total Western Forelands licence area is now about 5.5 times larger than the adjacent Kamoa-Kakula copper complex.

Exploration activities on the new licence package started before the onset of the wet season, consisting of a soil programme covering an area of 200 km². The samples are currently undergoing multi-element geochemistry analysis. The results of this analysis will be overlaid with the geophysical data and used for 2025 drill target generation, Ivanhoe said.

An additional drilling contractor has been appointed to mobilise two new diamond drill rigs for a 32 000-m drilling programme that will start at the start of the dry season and span 24 months.

During the fourth quarter, three drill rigs were also focused on the Kitoko area, drilling a total of 6 976 m across 13 holes. This brought total drilling in the Kitoko area for 2024 to 32 590 m across 40 holes. Kitoko mineralisation is interpreted to occur in two onlap zones, Kitoko East and Kitoko West, which are open at depth and laterally in all directions.

The 2024 drilling programme exceeded its original objectives set at the start of the year. The original target of 70 000 m of diamond core drilling was surpassed, with year-end total drilling of 81 734 m. The strong drilling performance was driven by the deployment of additional diamond drill rigs during the second half of last year and lower-than-average rainfall at the start of the wet season in November.

Ivanhoe announced a 2025 group-wide exploration budget of $75-million, with $50-million allocated to exploration activities in the Western Forelands, consisting of 102 000 m of diamond drilling and 18 000 m of reverse circulation drilling.

An updated mineral resource estimate for the Makoko area is expected in the second quarter, including maiden resource estimates for Kitoko and Makoko West.

APPOINTMENTS

Meanwhile, Ivanhoe Mines has appointed Marna Cloete, currently president, to also serve as CEO. She has been in a leadership position in the company for nearly two decades.

"[Cloete]’s leadership has driven the company forward with tenacity, assembling a world-class team. She has built a mining company with heart – fostering sustainable operations that leave a lasting positive impact.

“I have had the privilege of witnessing her rise from a finance position to CFO, then president, and now CEO. She is deservedly recognised as one of the world’s foremost mining business leaders,” Friedland said.

Cloete joined Ivanhoe Mines in 2006 with a chartered accountant (CA) background and a master’s degree in taxation. She served as CFO from 2009 to 2020 before becoming president in April 2020.

Under her leadership, Ivanhoe Mines launched production at the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex in the DRC. She also led the rehabilitation of the Kipushi mine and oversees the development of the Platreef project, a major precious metals project in South Africa.

Cloete also spearheaded the establishment of the Kamoa Centre of Excellence in October 2023, a higher-education facility in collaboration with the DRC government and President Félix Tshisekedi.

“When I joined Ivanhoe, there were fewer than 100 employees in the entire organisation. [We now have a] full-time complement of over 7 500 dedicated people across our operations, and over 30 000 – including contractors and many thousands of lives more – positively impacted by our activities,” Cloete said.

At the Kamoa Copper Joint Venture (JV), Annebel Oosthuizen has been appointed MD, succeeding Riaan Vermeulen. Oosthuizen, previously commercial CE, has been a key executive in the JV for a decade.

Oosthuizen played a pivotal role in Kamoa-Kakula’s transition from development to an operating mining complex, overseeing financial management and logistics for a $6-billion capital investment.

Tom van den Berg has also joined the team as operations senior executive for Kamoa-Kakula, bringing 36 years of experience in mining development and operations, including previous roles at Sibanye-Stillwater.

He previously served as mining strategy and technology senior VP at Sibanye-Stillwater, and held executive roles at Harmony Gold and Anglo American Platinum. Van den Berg was also previously an operational mining GM for Anglo American.

His expertise spans underground and openpit mining, stakeholder engagement, and safety initiatives.

Oosthuizen and Van den Berg will serve as Ivanhoe Mines’ senior management designees in the Kamoa-Kakula JV.