Streaming companies interested in PGM deal from Ivanhoe Mines’ Platreef project

Robert Friedland, executive chairman, Ivanhoe Mines

IVANHOE Mines, the company run by world-renowned mining entrepreneur, Robert Friedland, was in discussions with various companies wanting to negotiate streaming deals from the firm’s Platreef platinum group metals (PGM) project in South Africa.

Reuters cited a statement issued by Friedland in which he said of the potential investment: “That level of interest requires that we critically examine these opportunities, which we are now doing”.

There was also interest in Western Foreland, a project Ivanhoe Mines is developing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ivanhoe is also continuing strategic discussions over its Kipushi copper project in the DRC, said Reuters.

Ivanhoe’s fully-owned Western Forelands exploration licences range over 2,500 square kilometres next to the company’s Kamoa-Kakula project in Congo’s copper belt. Ivanhoe holds 64% of the Platreef project through its subsidiary Ivanplats, said Reuters.

The Kipushi project, which also contains zinc, silver, lead, and germanium, is owned 68% by Ivanhoe Mines, with the remainder held by the Congo’s state-owned mining company, Gecamines.

In February, Miningmx reported Friedland as saying that it was a fiction that mining in Chile’s copper industry was safer for investors than looking for the metal in the DRC. “It’s absolutely silly to think that Chile is a safe place to mine and should have a three or four per cent discount rate and, somehow, the DRC should have a 12% discount rate,” said Friedland at the 2020 Mining Indaba.

“There’s this fiction that somehow Africa is dangerous and it’s safe for industry to go to Chile or Peru. I challenge that. I would rather be in Africa – in the DRC – which was the world’s largest producer of copper until Chile got invented in the 1970’s.”