2.66% Copper: Same Basin, Same Grade, One of Them Is Already a Mine

2.66% copper — an inevitability?

That is the grade on Ivanhoe Mines' expanded Indicated resource at Makoko. Kamoa-Kakula, already in production next door, carries 1.27 billion tonnes Indicated at 2.65%.

Same basin. Same operator. Same effective date of 31 March 2026.

Ivanhoe lifted the Makoko District by 30% on Tuesday to roughly 12 million tonnes of contained copper. Across the Western Forelands the statement now reads 42 million tonnes Indicated at 2.66% copper, plus 612 million tonnes Inferred at 1.80%. About 64,000 metres of diamond drilling since May 2025 delivered the increase.

Two things in the release matter more than the headline percentage.

The drill rate

Robert Friedland put it at 100 million pounds of contained copper for every 1,000 metres drilled. The 2026 programme is 94,500 metres, the largest ever run on the project, and it is being upsized again in the fourth quarter to infill shallow mineralisation.

What the estimate leaves out

Around 60,000 metres drilled this year fell outside the 31 March cut-off, and mineralisation remains open in multiple directions.

Copper traded near USD 6.75 a pound on Tuesday, within a few cents of last month's record. A thinning pipeline of large, high-grade discoveries is largely why.

Makoko is 12 million tonnes of contained copper at Kamoa-Kakula grades, in the world's second-largest copper-producing country, alongside infrastructure Ivanhoe has already built once.

Scoping study lands in the first quarter of 2027. The Q4 infill drilling is the one to watch.

Less searching. More strategising.™