According to Robert Friedland and Yufeng “Miles” Sun, co-chairmen of TSX-listed Ivanhoe Mines, great progress is being made in advancing underground mine development at the Kakula mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with current mining grades of up to 11% copper in one of the access drives being advanced from the northern decline.
Kakula’s northern and southern dual access drives are expected to be connected (the mining term is ‘holing’) next month, allowing highly-productive mining (stoping) operations to begin in high-grade zones. Approximately 260m of tunnelling remains until the access drives are connected.
Good progress is being made at Ivanhoe Mines’ Kakula copper project in the DRC. Image credit: Ivanhoe mines
Steve Amos, Kamoa Copper’s head of projects says that the updated project schedule for the initial 3.8 million-tonne-per-annum (Mtpa) concentrator plant indicates that first ore now is expected at the beginning of the quarter 3 2021 planned window. “There has been an enormous effort by the project and construction teams to not only maintain the milestone dates with the challenges presented by the pandemic, but to place ourselves in a position to commission early. We are delighted with the progress made to-date,” says Amos.