Term sheet allocates Kamoa-Kakula up to 240,000 tonnes of annual capacity for export of copper products along the Lobito Corridor from 2025.
Lobito Corridor passes through Ivanhoe’s Western Foreland licences and within five kilometres of Kamoa-Kakula.
Lobito Corridor will transform economic and social development of the DRC, as well as its neighbouring countries, accelerating regional economic development.
Lobito Corridor is supported by the United States and G7 nations through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.
Cape Town, South Africa–(Newsfile Corp. – February 7, 2024) – Ivanhoe Mines’ (TSX: IVN) (OTCQX: IVPAF) Executive Co-Chair Robert Friedland and President Marna Cloete announce today, during the 2024 Mining Indaba at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) in South Africa, that Kamoa-Kakula has signed a term sheet outlining the key terms for a Reserved Capacity Agreement for transporting mineral products from the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex along the Lobito Atlantic Railway Corridor.
The Reserve Capacity Agreement, to be based on the non-binding term sheet, will allocate Kamoa-Kakula the right to transport along the Lobito Corridor a minimum of 120,000 tonnes and a maximum of 240,000 tonnes per annum of blister-anode or concentrate. The term sheet outlines a minimum term for the agreement of five years commencing in 2025, following a ramp-up year in 2024. The costs of exporting mineral products along the Lobito Corridor are expected to be cheaper than the current market price for trucking via the existing export routes (as shown in Figure 1), and the rates are anticipated to reduce further as volumes transported along the line increase.
The term sheet also extends the initial trial shipments, as originally announced on August 18, 2023, with up to a further 10,000 tonnes to be transported along the Lobito Corridor during 2024. The initial trial shipments commenced in December 2023, as announced on January 2, 2024.
Ivanhoe Mines’ Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland commented:
“We admire the hard work of the Lobito Corridor consortium and Trafigura, working with their partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, to build a new supply chain that is fast becoming one of the most important trade routes for vital copper metal in the world.
“The transformative economic corridor will unlock more copper projects due to the lower logistical costs. Cheaper logistics increase the amount of economically recoverable copper across the Copperbelt, as cut-off grades can be lowered. This makes a significant impact on discoveries made in the DRC, such as the recent high-grade and open-ended Kitoko copper discovery in the Western Foreland, where we are stepping up exploration activities this year to find more ultra-green copper metal. Kitoko is located only 30 kilometres from the existing rail line.”
Trafigura Group, Executive Chairman and CEO, Jeremy Weir commented:
“We very much welcome Ivanhoe Mines’ Kamoa-Kakula in becoming the first customer to sign a term sheet to export minerals along the Lobito Rail Corridor. As a consortium member, Trafigura has also now signed a term sheet over a minimum term of six years, supporting the consortium’s aim to grow the volumes on the corridor so that it becomes the leading rail transport link in sub-Saharan Africa.”
The Lobito Atlantic Railway Corridor is a rail line that links the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Copperbelt to the port of Lobito in Angola. The rail line extends 1,289 kilometres east, from the port of Lobito to the Angola-DRC border town of Luau.
