The Mount Elliott indicated and inferred resource now stands at 570 million tonnes at 0.44% copper and 0.26 grams per tonne gold for 2.5Mt copper and 4.7 million ounces of gold, using a 0.3% copper equivalent cut-off.



The new resource represents a 95Mt increase in tonnage, a 200,000t increase in contained copper and a 400,000oz increase in contained gold.

Within the total resource, the SWAN high-grade zone has an indicated and inferred resource of 62Mt at 1.01% copper and 0.58gpt gold, or 1.41% copper equivalent, using a cut-off grade of 1% copper equivalent.

Ivanhoe chief executive officer Peter Reeve said the project is one of the largest copper-gold systems discovered in Australia.

“We expect that with the correct development approach Mount Elliott will become a significant operating project for Ivanhoe Australia in the future,” he said.

“Our focus will continue to be on the SWAN high-grade zone and the extension of the Mount Elliott decline may be important in the future evaluation of that high-grade core.

Reeve said parts of the project are underexplored and the deposit remains open in several directions.

He said there are anomalies with similar geophysical characteristics to SWAN that are yet to be tested.

The company is now planning a scoping study at the project, where mining could take place via a combination of open pit, sub-level and block cave mining methods using conventional copper-gold flotation.

One possibility could be sending the ore to the Osborne concentrator recently acquired from Barrick Australia.

The company’s Merlin molybdenum mine in Cloncurry is already under construction for processing through Osborne.

Last week Ivanhoe announced plans to list on the Toronto Stock Exchange, where parent company Ivanhoe Mines already has a listing.

Shares in Ivanhoe Australia jumped 6% or A18c to $3.12 this morning on the Australian Securities Exchange.