Ivanhoe Mines has announced assay results from an additional eight holes of its ongoing drilling campaign at its Kakula discovery at its Kamoa copper project near the mining centre of Kolwezi in the DRC’s Katanga Province. Commenting on the results, Robert Friedland, Executive Chairman of TSX-listed Ivanhoe, says that Kakula could prove to be Africa’s most significant copper discovery.
Explaining the history of the Kamoa project, Friedland says that Ivanhoe’s geologists started the initial exploration programme at Kamoa in 2003, at which point it was nothing more than an unknown grass-roots prospect generated by Ivanhoe’s geological team and covered with a thin layer of Kalahari sand, sitting in a previously unrecognised district within the Central African Copperbelt.
Boxcut and surface facilities at Kansoko Sud. The Kakula exploration area is approximately 10 km south-west of Kansoko Sud (photo: Ivanhoe).
The initial significant discovery at Kamoa was made in 2008 and, by 2013, it had become apparent that it was the world’s largest, undeveloped, high-grade copper discovery. “However, given the remarkable exploration success we have had to date at the Kakula discovery, as it has been progressively revealed during the past year, we believe that this new copper discovery is substantially richer, thicker and more consistent than other mineralisation that we have found elsewhere on the Kamoa project,” states Friedland. “The results speak volumes: the Kakula discovery is a complete game changer in our planning for the development of the Kamoa project.”
The primary objective of the current drilling programme at Kakula is to confirm and expand a thick, flat-lying, bottom-loaded zone of very high-grade, stratabound copper mineralisation at the southern part of the Kakula discovery area that has the potential to be amenable to bulk, mechanised mining and have a significant, positive impact on the Kamoa project’s future development plans. Ivanhoe expects to have an initial, independent mineral resource estimate prepared for Kakula around the end of Q3 2016.
Highlights of the latest drill results, which confirm the exceptional grades and shallow, flat-lying geometry of the Kakula mineralised zone, include hole DD1005 which intersected 7,36 m (true width) of 8,11 % copper at a 2,5 % copper cut-off, 10,3 m (true width) of 6,52 % copper at a 2 % copper cut-off and 20,71 m (true width) of 3,85 % copper at a 1 % copper cut-off.
As a result of the ongoing success of the Kakula programme and the extension along trend of the central, well-mineralised, chalcocite-rich core to the north-west and south-east at relatively shallow depths, the drilling programme has been expanded by an additional 9 000 m, to a total of 34 000 m.
To help advance the ongoing exploration and delineation of the Kakula deposit, the Kamoa technical team is proceeding with the engineering and preparation of tender documents for the construction of a boxcut at Kakula to accommodate decline ramps that will provide underground access to the deposit.
