Ivanhoe Mines Uncovers Wholly-Owned Copper Discovery in DRC as Western Forelands Resource Jumps 30% to 12 Million Tonnes
Special call held September 8, 2026 detailing Western Forelands Mineral Resource Update
Ivanhoe Mines used a special call on September 8, 2026 to disclose a new copper discovery in the Democratic Republic of Congo that sits entirely outside its Kamoa-Kakula joint venture with Zijin Mining, meaning the company would not have to share the economics with a partner. Executive Co-Chairman Robert Friedland, dialing in from New York en route to Washington, D.C., called the timing "extremely significant" given that the announcement landed on a day when copper was "trading at the highest nominal price in the history of our species," with prices near $14,800 to $15,000 per tonne.
The new ground, held solely by Ivanhoe, covers an area roughly six times larger than the existing Kamoa-Kakula joint venture footprint. Friedland described the geology as having reached the edge of the sedimentary basin — what he called "the lip of the bowl" — where mineralization comes close enough to surface to support open-pit mining at grades the company believes could rank among the highest of any open pit copper operation globally. That distinction matters because Ivanhoe's cutoff grade for counting resources is already well above 1% copper, versus a global industry average of 0.62%, and many operating mines running below 0.3% to 0.2%.
Makoko District Resource Grows 30% Year-on-Year, 90% Since 2023
The core of Tuesday's update was a formal mineral resource increase at the Makoko district, a cluster of deposits — Makoko, Makoko West and Kitoko — that Ivanhoe has been drilling since 2018. The district's contained copper resource now stands at 12 million tonnes, up 30% from the 2025 disclosure and nearly 90% higher than the maiden resource of roughly 5 million tonnes published in September 2023. Resource grade across the district runs between 1.8% and 2.7% copper, in line with the Kamoa-Kakula deposit itself.
VP of Geosciences Tim Williams walked through the drilling history: the discovery hole was completed in 2018 at 300 to 400 meters depth, followed by 61,000 meters of wide-spaced drilling through the 2023 maiden resource, another 86,000 meters through the 2025 update, and a further 64,000 meters through March 2026 that extended strike length from 13 kilometers to 16 kilometers. Williams noted the mineralization "for every 1,000 meters of drilling... we are discovering in the region of about 45,000 tonnes of copper," and characterized the deposit as "open ended" both along strike and to the east, where wide-spaced drilling at 800-meter centers has just begun.
Discovery Economics That Dwarf Industry Benchmarks
EVP of Corporate Development Alex Pickard put a number on the exploration efficiency that underpins the discovery: Ivanhoe's all-in cost per tonne of copper discovered across the Western Forelands sits below $10, versus an industry benchmark Pickard pegged at roughly $200 per tonne. With copper trading near $14,800 per tonne, the arithmetic is stark. Pickard also flagged that the district's total endowment across the broader 2,500 square kilometer, 30-plus license Western Forelands land package now exceeds 55 million tonnes of contained copper — more than double annual global mine supply — discovered on ground that was "thought to be completely unprospective" three decades ago because it sits under a blanket of wind-blown Kalahari sand that obscured the underlying geology.
Open Pit Optionality Changes the Capital Intensity Math
EVP of Technical Services Simon Bottoms detailed why the newly identified shallow, subcropping mineralization matters for project economics. The current 12 million tonne resource has been constrained entirely within an underground mineable-shape envelope at a 1% cutoff grade using an NI 43-101 mineable shape optimizer methodology, which Bottoms described as deliberately conservative. As drilling converts portions of the upper 150 to 200 meters into open pit resources at cutoff grades below 0.5% copper, he expects "further growth in the mineral resources within those open pit potential areas relative to what's been reported in the existing MSO." Because the ore bodies dip gently, Bottoms said crown pillars between future open pits and underground workings would "sterilize very, very little" of the overall resource, allowing concurrent open pit and underground production — a structure designed to lower initial capital intensity and shorten payback.
Ivanhoe is drawing directly on the Kamoa-Kakula template, where first production was achieved roughly five to six years after discovery at capital intensity below $10,000 per tonne — a benchmark management believes is repeatable at Western Forelands given similar depth and grade characteristics. Bottoms said the company is targeting shovel-ready status for open pit portions of Western Forelands by the end of 2028, with underground development following shortly after.
Drilling and Resource Timeline Through 2027
Williams laid out a concrete sequencing: infill drilling to 200 meters depth completes by February 2027, a second infill phase runs through May 2027, at which point management will rerun the resource estimate, and expansion drilling continues from May through August 2027. Management expects 30% to 40% of the currently inferred resource to convert into the higher-confidence indicated category over this period, concentrated in the 0 to 400 meter depth range. Exploration spending on Western Forelands is budgeted at $40 million for 2026, with 2027 spending guided up 30% to 50% from that level.
Ownership Structure and Partnership Optionality
Under the DRC Mining Code, Ivanhoe's maximum equity position in converted mining rights is capped at 80%, with the state and Congolese nationals holding the remaining 20%. Makoko has already been converted to this 80% structure, while some earlier-stage exploration licenses remain at up to 100% Ivanhoe ownership until conversion, and others are subject to joint-venture earn-in arrangements starting at 64% and rising toward 80%. Pickard acknowledged persistent third-party interest in partnering on Western Forelands, saying a deal at the right valuation "could probably fund a material share of our sort of project equity to actually take the Western Forelands to first production," but characterized any partnership as opportunistic rather than necessary given the company's existing balance sheet strength.
Infrastructure and Processing Seen as Manageable, Not Constraining
Management downplayed infrastructure risk. Ore across the district is fresh sulfide requiring only a single sulfide processing circuit, with oxide material limited to the top 10 to 20 meters. Regional smelting capacity, including the existing Kamoa-Kakula smelter and the nearby Lualaba Copper Smelter in Kolwezi, is expected to be sufficient even as Kamoa-Kakula's own 500,000-tonne smelter fills up. Power supply is adequate for current-stage development, with modular solar-battery solutions — deployable on an 18-to-24-month timeline — available ahead of full-scale construction needs.
Exploration Playbook Extending to Zambia, Angola and Kazakhstan
Williams described the geological framework developed at Western Forelands — a "mineral systems approach" focused on fluid pathways and structural conduits rather than surface outcrop — as now being applied to a 7,700 square kilometer land package in Zambia acquired last year, an earlier Angola acquisition from 2023, and a newer initiative in Kazakhstan. Both Zambia and Angola were targeted specifically because they sit under similar Kalahari sand cover that has historically deterred competitors from exploring the ground, giving Ivanhoe a first-mover advantage in terrain it argues no one else has systematically tested.