
Marna Cloete
PRESIDENT: Ivanhoe Mines
‘Robert is the visionary, I’m the implementer. It turns out I’m like a politician and team builder’
AFTER more than a decade of development, 2025 is the year when we see how it all hangs together for Ivanhoe Mines. The signs are promising. The Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reached 500,000 tons in annualised concentrate production late last year ahead of its last – and fourth – expansion phase. A $1bn, 500,000t/year smelter is also under construction. South of Kamoa, near the border with Zambia, Ivanhoe reopened the 800,000t/year Kipushi zinc/copper mine after more than 30 years in mothballs. Both are the fruits of Ivanhoe founder Robert Friedland’s endeavour, says Cloete.
Speaking at the Financial Times Mining Summit in September, she described how in 2008 Ivanhoe’s enthusiasm for Kamoa was only supported by China’s Zijin Mining Group, which subsequently took a 39.6% stake. The West has since started to get involved in the critical minerals supply chain, albeit belatedly. In February last year, the US-financed Lobito Atlantic Railway linking the DRC to Angola, took Ivanhoe as its first client with a deal to put 120,000 to 240,000t of concentrate annually on the line.
Meanwhile, a study is due into Western Foreland, a copper deposit neighbouring Kamoa-Kakula, described by Cloete as the “sizzle on our steak”. The Makoko and Kiala deposits are causing particular excitement. Copper is welcomed by the market but the picture is less clear in platinum group metals (PGM) which Ivanhoe will start mining at the 100,000-ounces-a-year Platreef Project in South Africa. Platreef was delayed in order to build scale. Asked if the PGM market needed more metal, Cloete responded: “Future demand will be met by the lowest-cost producers.”
LIFE OF MARNA
A registered chartered accountant with a master’s degree in the engrossing discipline of taxation, Cloete joined Ivanhoe Mines in 2009. She became the firm’s CFO and then its president in 2020. She describes herself as “a politician and team builder” implementing the vision of Robert Friedland whom, amusingly, she thought was there to “fix the water cooler” when they first met. Cloete was previously part of PwC’s Mining and Metals division before moving on to Group Five Construction, both in South Africa.