Key Takeaways:
Contained copper growth since maiden 2023 estimate:
Ivanhoe Mines' Makoko District in the DRC ranks as the decade's largest copper discovery, secured by 64,000 metres of drilling since May 2025.
"The Western Forelands discoveries continue to grow explosively, confirming the area as the most important sedimentary-hosted copper basin on our planet," Robert Friedland, founder and executive co-chairman at Ivanhoe Mines, said. "One might struggle to find a larger copper system that has been discovered in the past 30 years."
The company's Western Forelands licence package, spanning 2,426 square kilometres, now carries 42 million tonnes of Indicated resources grading 2.66 percent copper and 612 million tonnes of Inferred material at 1.80 percent copper, on a 100 percent basis. The estimate, cut off March 31, incorporates about 64,000 metres of diamond drilling across 106 holes completed since the May 2025 update, which added roughly 130,000 tonnes of contained copper to the Indicated category and 2.63 million tonnes to Inferred.
The Makoko District, comprising the Makoko, Makoko West and Kitoko discoveries, hosts 34 million tonnes of Indicated resources at 2.66 percent copper and 612 million tonnes of Inferred at 1.8 percent copper within mineable shapes. Ivanhoe's geologists have now found more than 55 million tonnes of copper across the Western Forelands and the adjacent Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex, which it operates with Zijin Mining.
Makoko strike length up 400% to 16 kilometres
The update applies mineable-shape optimization for the first time, constraining reported tonnes to coherent shapes based on mining geometry and anticipated dilution rather than reporting directly from the block model. Mineralization remains open to the northeast and downdip, with strike length up more than 400 percent to 16 kilometres since the maiden 2023 estimate and area up 300 percent to 61 square kilometres.
The scale dwarfs peers. Major copper discoveries have slowed from roughly 10 a year two to three decades ago to about one a year over the past decade, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, leaving the Western Forelands as the largest new copper system found since 2015. Ivanhoe has delineated the resource at a discovery cost below $10 per tonne of copper, or less than $0.005 per pound.
120,000 metres of infill drilling ahead of Q1 2027 study
Ivanhoe's 2026 Western Forelands program is its largest to date at 94,500 metres, with about 70 percent of the diamond drilling complete by August. Roughly 60,000 metres of results will feed a further resource update in 2027. An upsized program of an additional 120,000 metres of infill drilling, set to begin in the fourth quarter, is expected to upgrade 30 to 40 percent of Inferred contained copper to the Indicated category, targeting shallow mineralization less than 400 metres from surface with open-pit extraction potential.
A Makoko scoping study is scheduled to commence in Q1 2027, with development expected to combine shallow open pits and underground mining. The route to first production benefits from the Kamoa-Kakula blueprint, which advanced from discovery to output in under six years at a capital intensity of about $8,800 per tonne of annualized copper production across its first three phases. LME copper has climbed 78 percent since the maiden resource in November 2023, from $8,167 per tonne to a high of $14,530 per tonne on September 7.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
