Canadian-headquartered Ivanhoe Mines has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with China Nonferrous Metal Mining (CNMC), one of China’s leading mining companies, to jointly examine exploration, development and acquisition of mineral projects, as well as production, smelting and logistics opportunities, on the African continent.
Robert Friedland, co-chairman at Ivanhoe. Image credit: Ivanhoe
CNMC, headquartered in Beijing China, is a world leader in the development of nonferrous metal projects. The company is invested in exploration, construction, engineering, mining, smelting and logistical operations in more than 80 countries and covering more than 40 nonferrous metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, gold, silver, tantalum, niobium, beryllium, zinc and lead.
“Our long-standing relationship with CNMC goes back decades to when Wu Jianchang was the general manager of China National Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation − a pioneer industrial group specialising in the mining and metallurgy sector. Our good friends at CNMC are aware of the enormous challenges of discovering and building a new world-scale copper, nickel, zinc, or platinum-group metals mine. They also appreciate that ‘grade is king’ and that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and indeed all of Africa, has by far and away this planet’s best potential for major, new, high-grade mineral discoveries,” says Robert Friedland, co-chairman at Ivanhoe.