IVANHOE Mines, the company run by world-renowned mining entrepreneur, Robert Friedland, was in discussions with various companies wanting to negotiate streaming deals from the firm’s Platreef platinum group metals (PGM) project in South Africa.
There was also interest in Western Foreland, a project Ivanhoe Mines is developing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ivanhoe is also continuing strategic discussions over its Kipushi copper project in the DRC, said Reuters.
Ivanhoe’s fully-owned Western Forelands exploration licences range over 2,500 square kilometres next to the company’s Kamoa-Kakula project in Congo’s copper belt. Ivanhoe holds 64% of the Platreef project through its subsidiary Ivanplats, said Reuters.
The Kipushi project, which also contains zinc, silver, lead, and germanium, is owned 68% by Ivanhoe Mines, with the remainder held by the Congo’s state-owned mining company, Gecamines.
In February, Miningmx reported Friedland as saying that it was a fiction that mining in Chile’s copper industry was safer for investors than looking for the metal in the DRC. “It’s absolutely silly to think that Chile is a safe place to mine and should have a three or four per cent discount rate and, somehow, the DRC should have a 12% discount rate,” said Friedland at the 2020 Mining Indaba.
“There’s this fiction that somehow Africa is dangerous and it’s safe for industry to go to Chile or Peru. I challenge that. I would rather be in Africa – in the DRC – which was the world’s largest producer of copper until Chile got invented in the 1970’s.”
