IVANHOE AUSTRALIA: SCOPING STUDY SHOWS 2.4B POUNDS COPPER, 2.2M OUNCES GOLD AT MOUNT ELLIOTT

Ivanhoe Australia Limited (ASX:IVA), a separate company from $10-billion market cap Ivanhoe Mines but sharing CEO Robert Friedland, had an up-day in the markets today after releasing a scoping study for its Mount Elliott Project in Queensland.

The stock rose 3.6% Wednesday on news that the past-producing Mount Elliott underground copper-gold mine can be mined with an open pit. The study also confirms that ore from the mine can be used as feedstock to feed IVA’s nearby Osborne operation, thus doubling Osborne’s minelife. IVA acquired Osborne from Barrick Gold in 2010 and the mine was on care and maintenance until February of this year when it resumed production of copper and gold concentrate.

“Mount Elliott is recognised as one of the largest copper-gold mineralised systems ever discovered in Australia and has the potential to provide Ivanhoe Australia with a longlife production base,” Ivanhoe Australia said in a statement.

The scoping study focused on two mineralized areas: the Mount Elliott open pit incorporating the original underground mine which stopped production in 2003; and a second SWAN high-grade zone containing 25.9 million tonnes of copper at 0.9% and 0.56 grams per tonne gold.

The open-pit zone would be mined independently of the SWAN zone, which would either be mined with a sub-level open-stope operation or a large block cave mine. Both of these options would require a new processing centre to be built at Mount Elliott.

“The study demonstrates that SWAN could become a major, long-life mine, with strong potential for increasing the resource at depth and also from nearby exploration targets. With the Mount Elliott development, this region could potentially become a second major processing hub for Ivanhoe Australia,” the company states.

In total the project contains 210 million tonnes of mineralized ore yielding 2.2 million ounces of gold and 2.4 billion pounds of copper in the indicated category. The open pit would produce 108,000 tonnes of copper and 152,000 ounces of gold over its minelife, while the SWAN Zone is predicted to yield 215,000 tonnes copper and 392,000 ounces gold over a 9-year minelife.