The earlier than planned placement of the orders for the concentrator's long-lead equipment is expected to accelerate the completion of the Phase 2 mill expansion from Q1 2023 to Q2 2022.
'There are many smart people in the mining industry who strongly believe that copper is quickly approaching a supply and demand divergence; where the amount of copper being produced globally will be far outstripped by demand,' said
'Getting into the queue now for the critical long-lead-time items, such as the ball mills, costs very little up-front money and enhances our flexibility to quickly move ahead on the first of multiple planned expansions.'
'The recent, independently-prepared pre-feasibility study for the expanded, 7.6 Mtpa mining operation - sourcing ore from both the Kakula and Kansoko mines - highlights the exceptional economic returns of this second phase development. Notably, the study outlines an after-tax NPV8% of
Construction of Kakula's initial 3.8-Mtpa processing plant is well underway, with the remaining long-lead items already delivered to site, with the exception of the transformers, expected in October. The bulk of the structural steel has already been delivered to site.
Aerial picture of Kakula's initial 3.8-Mtpa processing plant under construction.
With first phase production less than a year away, Kamoa-Kakula partners accelerate expansion plans and bring Phase 2 copper production forward
In order tobring forward the expansion of the Kakula processing plant from 3.8 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) to 7.6 Mtpa from Q1 2023 to Q2 2022, the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture will order long-lead items with a total commitment value of approximately
In parallel, Ivanhoe and Zijin are in advanced discussions with respect to various financing proposals at the joint-venture level, including an equipment-financing facility, a line of credit, and project financing. Ivanhoe expects that one, or more, of the financing facilities will be successfully concluded in the fourth quarter of this year. Ivanhoe will continue to fund its share of approximately 50% of the expansion costs until such a time that an alternative financing facility has been concluded.
Kakula is projected to be the world's highest-grade major copper mine with an estimated average ore feed grade of 6.6% copper over the first five years of operation, and 6.2% copper over the first 10 years.
At the end of August, the project's pre-production surface ore stockpiles totalled an estimated 671,000 tonnes grading 3.36% copper, including 116,000 tonnes of high-grade ore grading 6.08% copper. The stockpile grade should continue to increase as the project approaches initial production; as beginning this month the majority of mining at Kakula is expected to be in the ore zone near the centre of the deposit that has copper grades of between 5% and 8%.
Given that the underground development completed to date is well ahead of schedule, the project's engineers are working to further optimize the mine plans outlined in the recent definitive feasibility study and pre-feasibility study in order to accelerate the ramp-up of the mine and increase the tonnes of ore in the stockpile which may be processed through the expanded processing plant.
Miner Jacques Kitobo, examines a piece of ore from an ultra-high-grade working face in the room-and-pillar section of
Phased expansion scenario to 19 Mtpa in the new Kamoa-Kakula IDP 2020 would position Kamoa-Kakula as the world's second largest copper mining complex, with peak annual copper production of more than 800,000 tonnes
On
The estimated remaining initial capital cost is approximately
The new DFS evaluates the stage-one, 6-million-tonnes-per-annum (Mtpa)
The full scope of the expanded facilities covered by the PFS includes: underground expansion at the
The stockpile grade estimates contained in this news release are based upon bulk ore sampling from underground headings. Sampling is done on each heading every second blast and three 5-kilogram samples are taken. The samples are pulverized at the project's onsite laboratory and analyzed used using a portable XRF (pXRF) instrument. Kamoa Copper has routinely analyzed its exploration drill core for copper using pXRF, in addition to analysis at a commercial laboratory using four acid digest and ICP-OES. This data has demonstrated that pXRF results can be relied upon for grade control and run-of-mine sampling.
The Kamoa-Kakula 2020 Resource Update dated
The technical report includes relevant information regarding the assumptions, parameters and methods of the mineral resource estimates on the
A new independent, NI 43-101-compliant technical report for the
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