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Ivanhoe Mines has expanded the copper resource at its Makoko District in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 30 percent, strengthening the case for accelerated development at one of the world’s largest recent copper discoveries.
Makoko now contains about 12 million tonnes of copper across the Indicated and Inferred categories. The district forms part of Ivanhoe’s Western Forelands exploration project, located near the company’s Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex.
The increase follows an extensive drilling campaign completed since the previous resource update in May 2025. Recent drilling expanded the known mineralized area and tested extensions of the copper system. Earlier exploration also connected several areas of mineralization that now form the Makoko District, which includes Makoko, Makoko West, and Kitoko.
Makoko Continues to Grow
The latest drilling has significantly expanded the district’s physical scale.
Makoko now stretches for about 16 kilometres along strike, while the known mineralized area covers roughly 61 square kilometres. Both figures have increased sharply since Ivanhoe published the first Makoko resource in 2023.
The updated estimate includes a large Inferred resource grading 1.80 percent copper, alongside a smaller higher-grade Indicated component grading 2.66 percent copper.
Ivanhoe has also kept the nearby Kiala deposit in its Western Forelands inventory, adding another higher-grade copper target close to Makoko.
The new estimate does not capture all of the drilling completed during 2026. A substantial amount of recent drilling remains outside the current resource model and is expected to be incorporated into another update planned for 2027.
That leaves room for further growth as drilling continues around the edges of the known system.
Drilling Pushes Beyond Current Resource Limits
Ivanhoe is concentrating current drilling east and southwest of Makoko, while also testing the ground between Makoko and Makoko West.
Those areas are important because mineralization remains open in several directions. Continued drilling could extend the district beyond the limits used in the latest resource estimate and improve confidence in zones already identified.
The company has made Western Forelands its largest exploration drilling program to date in 2026, with multiple rigs active across the property.
That campaign builds on nearly a decade of exploration around the district. Ivanhoe first identified Makoko through step-out drilling from Kakula in 2018 and has since combined several discoveries into a much larger mineralized system.
Development Work Moves Closer
A scoping study at Makoko is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and will examine potential development routes for the district. The company is considering shallow open pits over selected higher-grade areas, together with underground mining.
Early site work has already started, including road construction, fencing, and environmental baseline programs.
The company is also applying mineable shape optimization to the resource model, adding practical underground mining parameters such as minimum mining widths, stope geometry, and dilution.
Makoko benefits from its location near Kamoa-Kakula, where Ivanhoe already has operating experience, infrastructure, and development expertise.
With additional drilling still to be added to the resource model and several mineralized zones remaining open, Makoko is likely to remain a major focus of Ivanhoe’s copper growth strategy in the DRC.
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