Ivanhoe Mines unveils updates on the Western Forelands Exploration Project!

Ivanhoe Mines has made a press release that, at BMO Capital Markets 34th Annual Global Metals, Mining & Critical Minerals Conference in Hollywood, Ivanhoe’s Executive Co-Chairman Robert Friedland and President Marna Cloete informed about the ambitious 2024 drill campaign and the 2025 exploration budget for the Western Forelands Project in the DRC.

Record achivment

According to the provided information the company in 2024 recorded over 80,000 meters of diamond drilling, which is the largest campaign yet! Moreover, the result showed expanded mineralization with shallow, high-grade copper, increasing the Makoko strike length by 20% to over 13 km. This is comparable to Kakula’s orebody. Defined high-grade, Kakula-style copper zones, with drilling revealing exciting growth potential for the Company.

The new licenses which were acquired in late 2024 extend Ivanhoe’s footprint by 20%, boosting the Western Forelands to over 5.5x the size of Kamoa-Kakula.

Drilling plan

In 2025 the company has planned $75M exploration budget which will be subjected to Western Forelands, including 102,000 meters of diamond drilling ($50M), $9M will be allocated for activities in Kazakhstan, and remaining $16M for Ivanhoe’s exploration activities in Angola, South Africa, and Zambia

The Company is planning an updated mineral resource estimate for Makoko, Makoko West, and Kitoko in Q2 2025.

Moreover, for a second year, preparations have been made to continue drilling through the wet season in the Western Forelands. An enhanced infrastructure enables year-round exploration, with 6 rigs active through the wet season and up to 11 rigs post-April.

Achivment and expectations

Robert Friedland summarized it best: “In 2024, Ivanhoe geologists completed another landmark year across the Western Forelands as we continue to discover more Kamoa-Kakula-style copper mineralization on our adjacent majority-owned licenses. Over 80,000 metres 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 mineralized system, which continues to grow in scale. (…) The 2024 drilling program has expanded the strike length of Makoko to over 13 kilometres … Makoko geologically resembles the Kamoa mines during the nascent days of development… and the Makoko deposit was already the fourth-largest copper discovery globally in the past decade when we last published a resource in November 2023 … fresh engineering is underway to independently quantify new resource numbers on this rapidly expanding Makoko and Kitoko system in the second quarter.”