The ultra-high-grade Kipushi Mine, with an average grade of 36.4% zinc in the first five years of production, will be returned to commercial production under a new agreement signed by Kipushi Holding, a 100% subsidiary of Ivanhoe Mines, and Gécamines, the Société Générale des Carrières et des Mines de la RDC. Both parties made the announcement on February 15, 2022.
“We recently witnessed the exceptional achievements of Ivanhoe in transforming the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture into a leading copper producer of the highest standards, now a benchmark on the Congolese Copperbelt. Ivanohe and Gécamines have also redefined the Kipushi project fairly, in line with the expectations of the Mining Code and those of Gécamines’ sole shareholder, the Congolese state. We are convinced that Kipushi’s new partnership around Big Zinc will be a benchmark for a successful combination of expertise, resources, a unique asset and a shared desire to create value for stakeholders, the state, shareholders and neighboring communities,” said Alphonse Kaputo, president of Gécamines. Adding that his company, which has been operating this mine for a long time, aims, by consolidating its partnership with Ivanhoe, to optimize its contribution to the mining sector of the DRC.
For his part, Gécamines chief executive Bester-Hilaire Ntambwe Ngoy Kabongo expressed his delight to bring the Congolese state-owned mining company’s long-standing partnership with Ivanhoe Mines “into a new phase that will bring significant benefits to long term to all parties. Gécamines sees in this the opportunity for better exploitation of Grand Zinc, the development of an integrated economic fabric and the anchoring of skills in the province of Haut-Katanga.
Ivanhoe Mines is a Canadian mining company whose activity is concentrated around three main projects in southern Africa: production from the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture copper mine in the DRC, the palladium-rhodium-platinum-nickel- Platreef copper-gold mine in South Africa and the historic remediated and modernized Kipushi zinc-copper-germanium-silver mine in the DRC, as well as the expansion of all these deposits.
