Ivanhoe Mines’ Congo smelter start-up: production and recovery notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Ivanhoe Mines has started copper anode production at the Kamoa-Kakula direct-to-blister smelter in the DRC, a 500,000 tpa facility targeting 99.7%-pure anodes and an overall copper recovery of 98.5%, with first output achieved on 29 December, about five weeks after heat-up. The smelter is being ramped to handle concentrates from the Phase 1–3 concentrators, with 2026 mine output guided at 380,000–420,000 tonnes of copper and on-site concentrate inventories cut from 37,000 to about 17,000 tonnes. Stage 2 dewatering of the earthquake-flooded Kakula mine is complete, selective mining has restarted, and Stage 3 pump-station recommissioning is planned through Q2 2026 without constraining production.
Technical Brief
- Once ramped, Kamoa-Kakula mine output (400 kt mid-point) will utilise ~80% of smelter nameplate capacity.
- Excess concentrate beyond Phase 1–3 throughput will be toll-smelted at the nearby Lualaba smelter near Kolwezi.
- On-site copper-in-concentrate inventory is planned to drop from ~37,000 t to ~17,000 t during 2026 destocking.
- Copper sales in 2026 are forecast ~20,000 t higher than mine production due to inventory drawdown.
Our Take
In our database, Ivanhoe Mines features in several late-2025 copper-price pieces that highlight record LME levels, so bringing a 98.5% recovery, 99.7%-purity smelter at Kamoa-Kakula online positions the company to monetise more of the value chain during a structurally tight copper market.
The related December 3, 2025 item on Kamoa-Kakula’s expected 2026 output dip suggests this smelter ramp-up will initially run below its nameplate, implying some spare processing capacity that could later accommodate debottlenecking or third-party feed if logistics and politics in the DRC allow.
With BMO Capital Markets appearing both in this piece and in multiple copper market round-ups in our coverage, the positive share-price reaction (up about 5% to C$16, C$23.2 billion market cap) signals that mainstream analysts are now assigning tangible value to in-country smelting in the DRC rather than treating it as execution risk.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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