Miningmx reported that Ivanplats, the base metal and platinum exploration company controlled by Mr Robert Friedland has found a new copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that matches the huge Oyu Tolgoi copper deposit in Mongolia.

Mr Friedland told delegates at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town that Ivanplats’ Kamoa project represented a westward extension of the copperbelt in the DRC. Kamoa was situated some 20 kilometers west of the Kolwezi section of the DRC Copperbelt and was larger than Kolwezi.

Mr Friedland said that it was the first world class copper discovery in the DRC since 1906 and that it would become the largest copper development on the African continent. It has long been believed that the Copperbelt had reached a stage of exploration maturity and it terminated at Kolwezi. Instead we have found a sleeping giant’ just west of Kolwezi which was covered by windblown Kalahari sands.

He said that the orebody is 22 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide. It is still open in all the important directions and drilling is continuing around the clock. The initial discovery had been made in August 2008 and that Ivanplats had applied for a mining licence in November last year.

Mr Friedland gave few specifications for the mine to be developed at Kamoa but indicated it could have a life of up to 150 years producing at an averate rate of about 500,000 t of copper annually.

He said that we are talking about a mine with a life measured in generations rather than decades. Ivanplats also intended developing a major zinc mine in the DRC following the purchase last year of 68% stake in Kipushi. It was time to build something on the scale of Oyu Tolgoi in Africa because of the fundamentals of the copper market which indicated a huge future undersupply of the commodity.

(Sourced from miningmx.com)