Ivanplats Makes Tier-1 Copper Discovery in Congo, Chairman Friedland Says

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) --Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum Ltd., the mining company known as Ivanplats, said it made the first so- called tier 1 copper discovery in the Democratic Republic of Congo in more than a century.

Ivanplats also made a tier 1 discovery in South Africa, Chairman Robert Friedland said today in a speech in Cape Town, without elaborating. “The details of those discoveries will be opening soon,” said Friedland, who is also chairman of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.

Mining companies are seeking to add assets after commodity prices rallied last year, sending the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index up 20 percent. Copper has gained more than a third in the past six months, while platinum rose by a fifth in London.

While Friedland didn’t give the location of the deposits, he said Congo’s southern Katanga province and South Africa’s Bushveld platinum district are “two of the richest places on this planet.”

The company’s Congo find is unusual because it doesn’t contain cobalt, he said. The Central African country holds a third of the world’s cobalt reserves and 4 percent of its copper. The Bushveld region has the world’s largest platinum reserves.