Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ivanhoe Mines Q1 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 1, 2025. I will now turn the conference over to Matthew Keevil, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator. Hello, everyone, and good morning. Thanks for joining us. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Ivanhoe Mines First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. I'm sitting here in sunny Vancouver. As the Operator mentioned, my name is Matthew Keevil, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications with Ivanhoe Mines. On the line today with the company, we have Founder and Executive Co-Chairman Robert Friedland, President and Chief Executive Officer Marna Cloete, Chief Financial Officer David van Heerden, Chief Operating Officer Mark Farren, and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alex Pickard. We will finish today's event with a question-and-answer session. You can submit a question using the Q&A box on the webcast page, as well as through the conference operator via your phone line.
Please do contact our Investor Relations team directly if your question is not addressed during the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our April 30th news release, as well as on SEDAR+ and at www.ivanhoemines.com. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ivanhoe Mines' Founder and Executive Co-Chairman, Robert Friedland. Robert, please go ahead.
Thank you very much to all the participants on this call. I'm greeting you from Positano, Italy. Very happy, of course, to introduce our team with this record-breaking quarter in virtually every respect. Our Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex is now amongst the top three producing copper complexes in the world. We had record-breaking production in April. We are essentially tied with Grasberg in second place for copper production, but we have the big momentum. As you'll see, we have plans to make the complex even greater. This has been an amazing quarter despite the macroeconomic situation in our share price. Can we have the next slide, please? I want to show you this good news through the good offices of the United States Department of State and the Government of Qatar.
A peace agreement has been signed under a declaration of principles settling down the tribal difficulties in northeastern Congo. This area has absolutely no impact on our operations, which are well over 1,000 km to the south, with no road connections. We are very happy to see that the Congo is stable, has the support and interest of the United States government, as well as the Qatari government. The principles have been put together to have a peace agreement that will last in that area. We are hoping that this is very good for the country of which we are the largest mining company. With that, I'd like to introduce Marna, or will you do that for us, Mark?
Thank you. Thank you, Robert. This is Marna, and welcome everybody to our quarterly call. It's been quite an exciting quarter for us. I think we've really broken the back of some of the issues we faced towards the end of last year and still at the beginning of this year, particularly around power. We are very excited that in April, we've broken the 50,000 tons of copper produced per month record. It's a new record for us. If you project that on an annual basis, that would put us well over 600,000 tons of copper. Really exciting times for us. I think the other thing that really surprised us this quarter—sorry, you can flip to the next slide—that really surprised us this quarter was the milling capacity at Phase 3. The milling rate was 6.1 million tons. It was more than 20% higher than design capacity.
You can see our teams are really pushing the envelope in terms of letting all our infrastructure work for us. Just back to power, we went from 50 MW of imported power to about 100 MW of imported power during the quarter. We expect that to further increase for the remainder of the year. That will really assist with the exciting start-up of our smelter during the second quarter that we're about to embark on. From a numbers perspective, I don't want to steal David's thunder. He's going to take you through our quarterly results. It's been a record quarter on EBITDA as well as on revenue. I think from a cost perspective, it's also been a very good quarter for us because we were trending towards the bottom of our cash cost guidance. David will give you further color on that.
If we flip to the next slide, just around health and safety, we do strive for excellence when it comes to health and safety, and one can never become complacent. We performed well compared to the industry average. We just had our board meetings where we've set our safety targets for this coming year, where we strive for a further reduction in our total recordable injury frequency rates. Something that we are working on, something that we are very proud of, especially if you take that we come through a period of intense construction, and we're also moving into a period of intense construction at Platreef. If we move to the next slide, very excited to release our annual sustainability report. I do urge you to go and have a look at this report.
It really is an outstanding piece of work to see what our teams are doing across all our projects. I think the statistic that really stands out is the first one on this page, where Kamoa-Kakula and Kipushi combined contribute about 8% to the GDP of the DRC. We have paid $1.1 billion in taxes and royalties to the government. It just shows you what a greenfield discovery does for a country. We believe that there are many more discoveries to be made in the DRC. Having companies embarking on exploration really changes the destiny of a mineral-rich country. You can look at the statistics here, but we have grown 38% year- on- year in our workforce. I think it is important to note that most of our workforce are local and from the areas in which we operate. That is something we pride ourselves on.
We have built new educational facilities. We have supported local enterprises. All these initiatives that we embark on really ensure that we do have a social license to operate in the areas where we work. With that, as a brief introduction, please go and look at this report. There are a number of nice videos to watch so that you can see this is not just a talk show, but what we are doing is real and it is impacting on people's lives. I am going to hand it over to David now so you can go to the next slide, and David will take you through our quarterly results. Thank you.
Thank you, Marna. Good morning and good day to everyone joining the call today. Maybe I'll just start by pointing to the nice picture of the smelter furnace on this slide. With the commissioning nearly complete, the smelter will be one of the few initiatives that will really transform our financial results over the next few quarters. If we move to the next slide, Kamoa-Kakula achieved its highest-ever quarterly revenue of $973 million in the first quarter of 2025. That at a realized copper price of $4.19 per pound of payable copper. Quarter-on-quarter revenue was up 15% from the $843 million achieved in the last quarter of 2024. We started stockpiling concentrate in preparation for the smelter startup expected in May with 48,000 tons of copper in concentrate in inventory at the end of the quarter, and therefore payable copper sold was less than produced.
As the 22,000 tons of copper in inventory at the Lualaba Copper Smelter are realized in the upcoming quarters, and with us almost having enough inventory on hand for our own smelter, copper sales is expected to be close to or exceed copper produced in the remaining quarters for the year. We therefore expect easily to exceed this latest revenue record in the coming quarters if the copper price stays close to the current levels or moves higher. Moving to the next slide. Yeah, Kamoa-Kakula's record EBITDA of $585 million was delivered at a very healthy margin of 60%, with cash costs down quarter- on- quarter to $1.69 per pound of payable copper and towards the lower end of our cash cost guidance range.
Mine site cash costs were close to the same levels seen in the fourth quarter of last year, but we did benefit from the lower treatment and refining charges linked to updated benchmarks, which resulted in an $0.08 quarter-on-quarter saving in cash costs. Considering that the power cost is up by $0.10 from where it was in the first quarter of 2024, the team has really done well to contain the costs. We have Kamoa-Kakula's EBITDA waterfall illustrated on the slide. The EBITDA waterfall highlights that the 35% quarter-on-quarter EBITDA growth was driven by principally the higher copper price throughout the quarter.
In our Q4 call, I mentioned that the quarterly EBITDA for the fourth quarter was artificially low due to the remeasurement of contract receivables, and that corrected as predicted in Q1, with the mark-to-market of provisionally priced sales being a $51 million gain in Q1 compared to a $52 million loss in the fourth quarter of last year. We sold 3,000 tons less than we did in Q4, while EBITDA benefited from the lower treatment and refining charges. The slight quarter-on-quarter increase in cost of sales when removing the impact of volume was due to the higher power cost in Q1. Mark Farren, our COO, will talk you through the recent increase in imported hydropower, which is leading to a decrease in the use of the more expensive backup generator power since mid-March 2025.
It would be remarkable to mention that if it was not for the increase in inventory, EBITDA for the quarter would have been quite a bit higher. Had we sold the 18,000 tons by which inventory increased, net revenue would have been an estimated $110 million higher, and EBITDA would have been roughly $65 million higher. If we had sold the entire 48,000 tons of contained copper in inventory during the quarter, EBITDA would have been roughly $170 million higher. Quite a bit of dry powder that will benefit us in the future. We turn to Kipushi on the next slide. Kipushi is now starting to contribute positively to our EBITDA, even though it is not yet operating at optimal levels.
Unsurprisingly, logistics are by far the biggest contributor to the cash cost of Kipushi, and that has been controlled pretty nicely with total cash costs close to the bottom of our guidance range. Mining support services and processing costs are expected to come down as production increases. Looking at Ivanhoe's consolidated results on the next slide, net profit was up by almost 40% quarter- on- quarter because of the increase in our share of Kamoa-Kakula's profit, which was up by 45%. Exploration expenditure in Q1 was a little less than we will see in upcoming quarters, with exploration progress being dampened by the rainy season.
On the next slide, with record EBITDA contributions from both Kamoa and Kipushi, it's not a surprise that we had record EBITDA for Ivanhoe Mines, but with numerous near-term initiatives that will drive further growth in coming quarters, I dare say that now is a really good time to own our stock. I would not be surprised if every quarter that follows over the next 12 months is a record. We have seen production increase at Kamoa-Kakula over the last month, and we expect sales to be closer aligned to production. Results will look better and better as the smelter ramps up, as Kipushi moves to steady state, as Platreef's Phase 1 commences production, and as we see the benefits of Kamoa-Kakula's Project 95 from next year. Moving to the next slide.
We have kept spending on our growth plans on track during Q1 and keep our guidance unchanged. We have been very successful in securing project-level facilities as required and where deemed beneficial. There is less of a need to do so now with the CapEx profile tapering off and the increase in our operating cash flow. As we continue with the Phase 2 development for Platreef, a larger project finance facility to fund Phase 2 CapEx is being considered. If we move to the next slide. Yeah, our leverage ratio remains nice and low, even with the well-timed completion of the $750 million notes for 7.875% closed in January. We've set ourselves a targeted net leverage ratio of 1x through the cycle.
Although it's a little bit higher than that on a backward-looking basis, it's as low as 1.2x based on an annualized Q1 EBITDA. It will come down pretty quickly as we deliver on the expected EBITDA growth. We were in a very healthy pro-rata cash position at the end of March of $763 million, with $717 million of that sitting at an Ivanhoe Mines level. I'll hand over to Alex Pickard, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, to cover the exciting operations and project updates together with Mark Farren.
Thanks a lot, David. As David mentioned, it's Alex Pickard here coming in from also a very sunny London. I'll be dovetailing this section with our COO, Mark Farren. I'll kick off with an operational review of Kamoa-Kakula in the first quarter on the next slide. Just to set the scene, I think we've stated several times that the first quarter was very much a hampered quarter in terms of the power challenges that we were facing, certainly up until mid-March. We're very pleased to say that those are challenges that we've now largely overcome. Mark will be commenting on that in much more detail. Despite all of the challenges, I think we can say that Kamoa-Kakula still delivered very strongly operationally during the quarter. We milled 3.7 million tons, which is comfortably a record. That's close to 15 million tons annualized.
We still think there is plenty of upside to get that up towards 17 million tons with 100% stable power. Phase 3 really has been a star performer since its commissioning last year. We have been milling at well over 20% above its design capacity at 6 million tons per annum. There is potential to push that through further as well with some optimization. Looking at the grades, you can see the blended grade on the left-hand side is 4.1%, which is coming roughly two-thirds from the Kakula mine and roughly one-third from the Kamoa mine. The grades at Kakula were very solid again, so above 5%, and grades from Kamoa around 2.75%. Those are expected to trend upwards towards 3% over the coming year as the mine moves from development into more of its steady-state stoping operations. Also very pleasing on the recoveries.
At Kakula specifically, we saw record recoveries well above 88%, which is very good to see in advance of our Project 95 initiatives coming in early next year. At Kamoa, we had recoveries around 85%, which also reflects plenty of room for upside even before the optimization efforts come in. With that, we've maintained our guidance for this year of 520,000-580,000 tons of copper. I'll come on to the recent results on the next slide, which are far in excess of that kind of production rate. In the medium term, we are certainly targeting 600,000 tons of copper, potentially higher from next year onwards annualized.
Coming back to the recent operating performance, we announced earlier in April that the whole team at Kamoa-Kakula has done an exceptional job in securing additional imported hydropower coming in from a number of sources, but a lot of that is coming in from Mozambique. We have effectively doubled our imported power from 50 MW to 100 MW, which is in addition to the 50 MW that is coming from the generation on the DRC grid. What you can see on the right-hand side is really a step change in terms of performance since that power has been coming in. Kamoa-Kakula has really been delivering quite incredible numbers, and we are quite excited about what this means for the rest of the year.
What you can see on that chart is the weekly copper and concentrate production in the bars, but also we have put the annualized rate above, which you can see has been well over 600,000 tons. Actually, a small correction, the bar for the 28th of April was a provisional number. We now have the month-end numbers in, and that is about 12,000 tons for the month, which is equivalent to 624,000 tons annualized. It really is delivering massive production. Also, the record in April, that is a major milestone to get above 50,000 tons. I think we have to congratulate the efforts of the team at Kamoa-Kakula. Just to announce for the first time, that final number was 50,246 tons. We comfortably beat the 50,000-ton mark despite it being a shorter 30-day month.
I'll now pass over to Mark on the next slide to talk in more detail about the power.
Thanks, Alex. Maybe just looking back a quarter, we were really battling with the power. We leaned heavily on our diesel gensets. We installed the 220 MW of diesel, as everybody knows, and we used about 100-150 MW continuously. We started this quarter in January with imported power and SNEL power just under 100 MW. At the end of March, just to put it in perspective, we simulated 150. We are going into the month of May. We should have 220 MW of a balance between SNEL, so basically in-country hydropower, and imported power. Until we start the smelter up, that means that we will not use any genset or diesel power. The total demand when we do run the smelter flat is about 250-270 MW. The basically target is the end of this year.
We have plans in place to cover that with imported power and locally generated hydropower. I think all in all, we did speak about it. I'm not going to go through all the initiatives in detail, but we are making progress inside the country with different initiatives. We will turn the turbine in quarter, I think the end of quarter two, early quarter three, that the big 188 MW turbine will be turning for Inga II. That will create additional generating power. There is also work that we're doing inside the grid to stabilize it, the work that I spoke about and I speak about every time to stabilize the grid and make sure that we get consistent, stable power running through that network. All those projects are going.
I think we're getting support, and thank goodness for that, we're getting support to do longer-term import projects as well as in-country projects to be able to increase our capacity in the country. This allows us to grow the business. Without this power, we won't be able to do the things that we want to do. First of all, we had to get it stable. We've increased the facilities, import and local. I think it's moving in the right direction. At the end of the day, the best thing possibly would be to have 220 MW of redundant diesel power and maybe get criticized for over-capitalizing on that. I'll be very happy when that happens. That's where we are on the power and initiatives inside that grid. Okay, next slide.
These projects that we're going to talk about now are really very quick to implement. Project 95 is committed. It's 30% complete. We will finish Project 95 in quarter one next year. It will give us about 30, maybe a little bit more, 30,000 tons of copper production from quarter one. What's nice about this copper production, it doesn't come with any mining cost or massive capital cost. You're going to see it's going to have a big influence on our C1 cash cost because it's absolutely just recovery-based. We will be increasing the recoveries of mining and production and processing that we've already created and done. The bottom line, the impact is straight to the bottom line, which I think is going to be very good. Phase 3, Alex spoke about Phase 3 running at around 6 million tons.
There will be some tweaking on Phase 3, some debottleneck work that we did on Phase 1 and 2, so quite a similar approach to that. Not an expensive project, but we want to stabilize that throughput from the five to about a 6.5 number, which will take our total production to about 17 million tons a year with what we've currently installed. Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, a little bit more capital, probably a $50 million number. We should be able to process 17 million tons consistently. That project has been identified and we'll finalize what needs to be done in this year and execute it as fast as we can because it's not expensive and it's going to give us about 20% extra production.
The big work we have been doing is really to look at what Kam oa-Kakula looks like in the long term. How many more phases do we put in? Is there another phase? How does it look and how do we time it? That work is drawing to a close. I am happy to say there is another, there is definitely a Phase 4 that will come in. It is probably going to be stepped. I did speak about it the last time with some early works, probably on the plant side. We are going to target a massive amount of tailings that we have deposited in our first cell with a grade of about 0.7-0.8% copper. We will start up the back end of that concentrator and deliver about 40,000-50,000 tons of copper through that facility.
Again, without a mining cost and a reasonably efficient capital structure that goes with it while we build up all reserves for a full Phase 4. If you know what Phase 3 looks like and you do, because we've told you, Phase 4 will probably end up being a replica of Phase 3. We'll build up all reserves through the current infrastructure that we have created. Basically the mines that we've created for Phase 3, I think it'll be a very efficient total process in terms of capital. The number we're going to target, I think for a steady state, because it's always a question, is for a long term, I think north of 700,000 tons of copper and some of the years breaking north of 800,000 tons of copper. It's a big mine that we're creating. There's one more big step along the way.
We need to secure some more power, obviously, for these projects, but you can have a look at our track record. We've done all these three phases. They've been on time. They've been on track. We've managed to find enough power to service them. We're going to start up the smelter in this next month. The smelter will be heated up in the next month, and we should start feeding in July. Hopefully, we can have enough stable power to be able to make sure that that thing runs perfectly. As it looks, I think we're forecasting to get stable power and to increase it over time. That will just carry on into Phase 4. The next slide, Alex. Okay, this is what we're talking about. We'll talk about this, Alex.
Yeah, thanks, Mark. I'll just set the scene in terms of the smelter. You can see in the image what a fantastic facility it is. That's another incredible capital project that's been delivered by the team at a cost of about $1.1 billion. It is the largest copper smelter in Africa at 500,000 tons of capacity, producing a 99.7% anode product. In fact, it's the largest smelter of its kind anywhere in the world. We have had some questions from people about the economics of the smelter in the context of the copper treatment charges. For those who don't know, copper treatment charges are trading at all-time lows, which really reflects the incredible tightness that we currently see and the level of demand for copper concentrates.
I think focusing on the treatment charges basically misses the point entirely in terms of why we have built this smelter facility. There are many more benefits to the smelter than simply the saving on the treatment charge. The biggest is that the smelter will save more than 50% on the logistics costs, which are currently around a third of our cash cost, going from shipping concentrate to shipping anodes. That saving alone is to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The other benefit that we mentioned on this page is the production of sulfuric acid. We will be producing up to 700,000 tons of acid. That sells at a price of typically over $200 per ton in the DRC Copper belt, where it is consumed by most of the other operations that are producing copper from oxides.
The offtake discussions for that acid are very well advanced. Aside from simply the financial benefit, there is also a tax benefit that I did not mention, but also in terms of our emissions and our CO2 credentials, the smelter will be one of the most efficient smelters in the world running on hydropower. It will also create a significant reduction in our Scope 3 emissions, which are largely arising from the logistics of moving copper concentrates on trucks. That is why we are incredibly excited to start up this smelter over the course of this year. I will just let Mark on the next slide, I think, comment on what we are expecting in terms of the operations and the ramp-up.
Thanks, Alex. Yeah, I mean, as we discussed, we sort of were waiting for enough stable power to get into the country. We will start heat- up in May. That is where we are at the moment. We will feed, first feed, it looks like in July. There is a ramp-up after that, I think eight or nine months to get it to 80% capacity, and we take it on to 100%. We have trained a very large workforce there. It is a mixture of expats and local people, expatriates from all over the world. It is a unique smelter with very advanced technology in it. I would welcome you guys to come and have a look anytime you want. Fantastic installation. We are very excited to actually get the smelter running.
As Alex said, the main reason for this is to offset that huge transport cost that we have and to increase that 60% margin that David was referring to. This smelter is going to have huge financial benefits to the company. We are very excited to get it moving. It will do 500,000 tons of blister anode. That is what it is designed for, which is the biggest of its kind in the world. Let's see how we go from heating up in May and first feed in July. There has been a huge amount of work to go in here. It is a massive footprint. We have done a lot of risk assessment around fire after our generator fires. It is also a crucial area of focus on any smelter. It is an area of focus and it has received our full attention.
We think it's going to be a fantastic part of our plan here, taking it forward and getting it running smoothly. Thank you. Next slide. Okay, Kipushi. Kipushi, we sort of got it moving last year. It was commissioned. It's running, but it needs to be optimized. There's work that we identified last year that's being executed. I think the end of the debottlenecking work ends in about October this year. We should go beyond the nameplate. We are sort of hitting nameplate achievements at the moment, but we will go beyond the nameplate by about October this year. My number really is to get us north of 250,000 tons. Between 250,000 and 300,000 tons of zinc, which will make it, I think, top three, top three or so zinc producers in the world. It's a tiny little footprint.
It's not a big mine, but it's very high grade. The feed grade, you can see on the slide, is 32.2% feed. I think over this next quarter, the next two quarters, we'll get Kipushi running smoothly. Its operating cost wasn't bad. We're aiming to keep it below $1 per pound. It makes a margin and contributes to our EBITDA. It's never going to be a massive mine, but it's a very well-run operation in terms of mining. With the improvements we're making to the processing, I think it's going to be a really, really lovely business that we have and that we run. Thank you. Next slide. I spoke about debottlenecking. It's going nicely. There's also, you know, we had some issues with power. We still have a few issues with power at Kipushi.
We have a similar approach to power in terms of de-risking it and making sure that we get it stable. It is not a big ask. The total project or the total site runs on 18 MW. It is not that difficult to manage. Still, we are focusing there. Like I said, as soon as we get it to steady state, which to me will be quarter three, quarter four, we will run north of 250,000 tons of zinc. Are we still on guidance? We should end the year just over 200,000, I think, somewhere in and around 200,000 tons of zinc. We are leaning quite heavily on what we do in the second, sorry, the third and fourth quarter, yeah. It is looking good. Thank you. Next slide. Do you want to start with this, Alex?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mark. We're shifting gears now to Platreef in South Africa and recapping on the study results that we published for Platreef back in mid-February. I would just note that the technical report for that study is now published on our website. I recommend reading that for the full details. These studies really create the pathway to take Platreef from being the world's largest precious metals deposit to one of the world's largest and lowest cost producers of this suite of metals, which is platinum, palladium, rhodium, and gold on the precious side, but also a very significant contribution from nickel and copper production. The study is split into two parts.
There is a feasibility study, which is looking at the Phase 1 production, which is coming later on this year, together with the Phase 2 expansion, which we're busy with and is on track for 2027. That is around 400,000 ounces of production. There is a much larger expansion study, which basically triples the hoisting and the milling capacity by 2030. That is where we take Platreef to over 1 million ounces of PGM, the four precious metal production. That is reflected in the PEA or the scoping study. Next slide, please. This slide is really just outlining that graphically. You can see where we are in 2025. We are expecting to start the Phase 1 concentrator towards the back end of this year. That has a milling capacity of 800,000 tons per annum. We will be producing some cash flow through 2026 and 2027.
Really, our main focus is on getting this mine to scale, which represents the Phase 2 expansion. The critical thing here is the shaft infrastructure and the hoisting infrastructure. The key date that we are looking at and that Mark will cover in the next slide is when we have Shaft 3 hoisting, which takes our overall hoisting rate to 4 million tons. That basically allows you to really open up the underground footprints off Platreef. In terms of the scale of this ore body, the sky really is the limit in terms of how big you can go. We are continuing with the work on Shaft 2, which basically is a shaft that can hoist 8 million tons of ore or waste per annum. One of the very largest shafts in the world.
That will really be the thing that unlocks the long-term potential and the long-term footprint of Platreef towards the back end of this decade. I'll pass over to Mark now to speak more specifically about the operations and projects there.
Thanks, Alex. Yeah. Platr eef hit reef today on 850. That's exciting for everybody. We intersected the reef finally. We'll start ramping up the long-hole stoping sections. We're on reef and opening up the footprint. Very exciting for everybody. Going back to sort of the history here, and very quickly, because it's been a long history, a sleeping giant sort of history. The giant is awakening up. I can promise you that. You can believe it or not, but Platr eef is going to start moving now. Shaft 2 is the shaft that we need to unlock Platr eef's capacity in terms of hoisting. That shaft, we've worked flat out to basically hole it from underground. Now we're working flat out to equip it. We will have it running in quarter one, 2026.
Once it runs in quarter one, 2026, it not only de-risks that first phase of production, that 800,000 tons, but it creates the opportunity for us to ramp up very quickly into what we call the Phase 2, the 450,000 ounces profile. While we're doing all of that, I know I'm talking a lot, but while we're doing that, we are also working flat out on Phase 3. Basically, these phases are interlinked. Shaft number two unlocks what Alex was referring to, 8 million tons per year of hoisting. That shaft is not being delayed. We actually did the reaming of it, the raise bore. Next year, we'll start sliping it and equipping it. It will be ready for Phase 3 hoisting as we move along. I think in terms of where we are with Platreef, we're finally starting to get there.
We've got the Shaft 1, which we've used to access the ore body and to give us the ability to get into Shaft 2 and Shaft 3 to install ventilation shafts, which we've done. I am very excited about Platreef. We are now in the ore body officially. We will start opening up the footprint. We will hoist out of Shaft 3 from quarter one, 2026. From that moment onwards, we will see a very fast ramp-up into a Phase 2 and a Phase 3 with a very good operating margin. We are confident about the work that we've published in this latest FS and PEA study. I think it's a very solid footprint that we have. It's a massive ore body. It has a huge competitive advantage over its peers because of the different ore body that we have compared to anything else in that Bushveld Complex.
I'm very excited about what we're doing there. Thank you. Next slide. Yeah, we spoke about this. We're on reef on 850. We're developing towards it on 750 as well. The rest of this year, we'll be opening up the footprint, developing some of the ore, creating the long-hole stopes, and really getting ready for the hoisting shaft, which will then come in quarter one next year. We can open up the mining and feed the first concentrator and the next one at the end of, well, within 2027. It will start moving quickly from now. Next one. Next slide. Alex.
Thanks, Mark. We're saving the best until last as usual, talking about Western Forelands and our exploration efforts. It is going to be another monumental year of exploration and drilling in the Western Forelands. We have a budget of $50 million. That's a 35% increase from what we did in 2024 and an ambitious drilling program of 102,000 meters, which is 20% higher than what we did in 2024. We currently have five rigs drilling. We're right at the back end of the wet season now. That is very soon going to more than double to 11 rigs as the dry season is incoming. A lot of that drilling is going to be focused on the 300 sq km of new licenses that we acquired in late 2024. That's an area that we are quite excited about.
As previously mentioned, we are planning on an interim mineral resource update that will be published within the next few weeks. I think that will really take people by surprise in terms of what we have basically managed to achieve through 2024. The first quarter of 2025 will be the cutoff. For a spend of about $30 million or $35 million on exploration during that time, we have managed to very, very significantly drill out and expand our resource base in Makoko, Makoko West, and Kitoko. The reason I say that we call that an interim resource is that we fully expect to be able to update that resource again this time next year, which will really be the sort of platform to move much more into kind of studies and engineering. The final slide is just talking about our exploration more broadly.
We did announce some very exciting news in early April, which is the entry of Ivanhoe Mines in a big way into Zambia. We have recently staked a license package of around 7,750 sq km. That is well north of three times larger than the entire Western Forelands license package that we have today. What you can see on the map is that we are basically chasing quite a similar geological thesis, which is the continuation of Western Forelands style sedimentary geology through that northwestern corner of Zambia and ultimately into Angola, where we have a license holding of about 22,000 sq km. That is roughly three times bigger again than what we have in Zambia. In Angola specifically, we have now sort of laid the foundations in terms of building out an exploration camp. We are planning over 6,000 meters of drilling during the dry season this year.
In Zambia, we will be coming back with more news in terms of what our plans are. What we will say is the Zambian government have done fantastic work in completing high-resolution airborne geophysics over the entire license area. That really does give us a great head start. We can hopefully commence drilling and targeted drilling much more quickly. The last thing, last but not least, and not shown on this slide, we do expect to have more news coming over the course of this year about our initial exploration program in Kazakhstan. We plan to be drilling some of those projects by around the middle of this year. With that, I think I'll conclude the presentation and pass back to Matt to share the Q&As.
Thanks, Alex. As per usual, we'll kick back to the operator first and foremost to clear any analyst questions on the phone line. Pending time remaining, we'll address some of the web questions as they come in. Operator, please proceed with the phone line questions, and we'll go from there. Thank you.
Thank you. First question comes from Orest Wowkodaw at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and thanks for the update. Just curious, these near-term growth plans at Kamoa-Kakula in terms of Project 95, the throughput optimization on Phase 3, is that included in your estimate or forecast of the complex producing around 600,000 tons of copper starting next year? Or is that incremental to that 600,000-ton number in, say, in 2026, 2027, 2028 timeframe?
It's Mark, yeah. It's a good question. Project 95 sort of releases some pressure off holding the 600, or let's call it above 600, above the 600 number. Anything else, like for example, if we do Project 4A with some early works treating the tailings, that's another 50. You are sort of moving into the 650-700 number. Any other project, which is the Phase 4 project, will take us to north of between 700 and 850. Project 95 itself is to get us stable at a 600 and slightly north of 600 number. Anything else is incremental. It's beyond. We are aiming to go, I've given you some guidance here. North of 700 for a long time. Where are we going?
Perfect. Just, is the CapEx associated with Project 95 and the throughput optimization of Phase 3, is that already in the 2025 and 2026 CapEx budget?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Orest, I'll take that one. Project 95 is completely included in the CapEx guidance. The initial cost of the throughput optimization is included. That might be augmented slightly.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Daniel Major at UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah, thanks for the questions. First question, just on the profile through the remainder of the year at Kamoa-Kakula. You've built about 50,000 tons of copper in concentrate inventory in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. What's the expectation for Q2 and then the release, yeah, potential release of kind of that inventory through the balance of the year?
I'm happy to take that one. We expect to probably, yeah, for ourselves to be pretty close to our production for the over the next quarter. There might still be a bit of an increase for inventory to be held for our smelter. We will also see a decrease on inventory held at the Lualaba Copper Smelter. It should be pretty flat over the next quarter with possibly a small increase. That inventory at both the Lualaba Copper Smelter and our own smelter is then sort of expected to release through the third and the fourth quarter with, as we noted, an estimated 17,000 tons of copper sort of to be retained in the smelter circuit.
Okay. Just to clarify that, 17,000 tons of copper in the circuit. You should release the 48 - 17 by the end of the year. Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah, correct. Plus a small bit of working capital inventory. Tons would be good.
Okay. Oh, I think you broke up slightly there, but I think I got it. Okay. Yeah, just second question on a financial question on the net debt balance at the Kamoa-Kakula JV. I think that's about $1.7 billion on a 100% basis. If we're thinking about the cash flow inflection point for the JV in the second half of this year and into 2025, 2026, how much would you be looking to reduce net debt in Kamoa-Kakula over the next few years? And how, obviously, that will impact the amount of cash that's upstream to the JV shareholders?
Yeah. We've tried to sort of include the repayment terms of the current facilities in our MD&A. You will note that the advance paid down pretty quickly. I mean, we've got some optionality to increase debt at a Kamoa-Kakula level because of its cash flow generating profile and the fact that leverage at a Kamoa-Kakula level is very low as well. We'll look at just optimizing that and the amount of cash we want to ultimately upstream. I think it's beneficial to have a good bit of debt at both levels. That's under consideration.
Okay. Just to push on that, I mean, it would be fair to assume you would want to reduce the $1.7 billion of net debt at the JV to some degree. Is that fair?
Yeah, that's fair to some degree, but we will always look to keep a portion of debt, at least definitely some local facilities and probably a bit of offshore facilities as well at that level.
Yeah. That is, Alex, maybe if I could just add something as well. I mean, $1.7 billion of net debt at the JV level, considering that Kamoa is generating or should be generating well north of $3 billion kind of run rate going forwards, is very low leverage to carry. To the extent that I think we can roll facilities and just keep those outstanding, we will, where it makes sense in terms of cost of capital to allow us to sort of unlock more cash flow.
Super clear. Thanks. If I could just squeeze one more in, just on the Western Forelands, I'm not sure it was a different messaging that you've been giving around the resource update in terms of giving an official resource update relative to the interim update you gave in January. Is that a change in messaging, or have I just misinterpreted it?
The interim update in January was just really showing you in terms of the strike and the deposits that we will be including in the resource update, but we've not put any numbers out to substantiate tons and grade. The last numbers we put out were roughly 18 months ago now. These numbers that are expected in the next couple of weeks are basically putting full resource estimates, tons and grades that will be signed off by an independent QP, which includes the Makoko West discovery. It includes the Kitoko discovery, some more drilling at Makoko itself. That's basically based on a cutoff up to the end of March of this year. Obviously, we're still drilling very, very heavily, which is why we call it an interim resource. We're by no means done.
Most of those deposits do remain open to some extent in various directions, in particular to the south and to the west.
Great. Look forward to it. Thanks.
Lawson Winder at Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you, operator. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Alex, David, and Mark. Just wanted to ask about the power. You guys spoke at length about the various power initiatives. Where I would like to focus is on the solar power project that you guys have created. What is the expected cost relative to your current grid cost with the solar project?
Sorry, I forgot to mention it. It's Mark. We've committed to two solar projects of 30 MW each. Both of them will be running by mid-2026, so 60 MW. We're talking to providers of the next two projects. They will be sort of, we'll be bringing in solar into the mix over time. The number, the cents per kilowatt hour, varies, but it is a range from about, let's call it $0.15-$0.18 per kilowatt hour. It is quite expensive. I think after these initial projects, we'll see lower numbers coming through over time.
Just in response to what Mark was saying there, that $0.15-$0.18 is including the depreciation because we're not funding the capital cost. The IPPs will fund the CapEx. We will just be the off-taker.
I would hesitate not to add. It's about less than half the cost of burning diesel, guys, with no capital cost. If you're looking at a cascade of what you'd like to do, really nice to have solar with battery storage as backup. That's solar that's available 24 hours a day instantaneously. That is not solar that is only available five hours a day. It is going to be the largest solar facility at any mining operation on planet Earth available 24 hours a day at less than half the cost, well under half the cost of burning diesel. Thank you.
Yep. That's very exciting. Thank you very much, Robert. Nice to hear from you. I wanted to ask about Inga II, also very prospective and exciting source of power going forward. The initial allocation you mentioned in the release was 71 MW , and that would increase to 178, a very significant amount of your power needs. Is that baseline and then the increase secured by some sort of contract, or is there any risk that that could be pulled back or allocated to other users?
It's Mark again. Yes, it's 178 MW. They're turbine. It gets released into the grid over time because there are certain other areas that we have to strengthen. We're adding capacitation into the grid at both switching stations, one at Inga and one at Kolwezi. There are some stability projects that we've initiated. I think I mentioned them the last time. The full 178 is basically more or less the, I think it's October, November next year. It starts with an initial 50, and then it moves on to 100 that we'll get allocated. I think we've called for something like 150 out of the 180 that we've asked for in the long term.
There will be some of, let's call it our work, our capacity that we introduce, getting basically assisting communities in the different areas as well, but not a lot of it.
Yeah. Maybe just to add, there is a contractual obligation on the state-owned power utility to provide the maximum allocation to people who contributed to the upgrade of generation and stability of the grid. You do get a curtailment if there are overall capacity constraints. I think it remains to be seen sort of as the generation becomes available to the mine, what those constraints will be. That is why we also have the imports. We are working on a few exciting projects for infrastructure to get additional power directly to the mine as well to ensure that we have sufficient power for growth projects too.
Yeah, this is Robert. I think you can stop obsessing. I think you can stop worrying about power for the long term. We have so many other plans to bring in power regionally and to improve the regional grid. Our problem was just growing pains, guys. We grew this mine so fast. Nobody in the world thought we'd grow this mine this fast. We've thrown off well over $6 billion of cash since it started less than four years ago, which is kind of mind-blowing. We have turned the corner on power. We have a lot of ideas regionally, and it's very important to benefit the Congolese nation. We're now responsible for about 8% of the GDP of the country, and we're heading to at least 10% of GDP.
In the future, we see a future where the Congo can produce millions of tons of copper per year that are not being produced now. The fundamental limiting factor is hydroelectricity, and we're going to have it. It is 100% true to state that the Congo is the world's fastest and greenest copper production on the planet. Congo has gone from about number eight to number two in the world in copper production in no small part due to the efforts of our 30,000 people. Congo is going to stay number one or number two for the foreseeable future, highest grade, greenest copper production on Earth. We are not really going to tell you about all the other ideas we have on power, but we will tell you we have turned the corner on power.
That is a function of the enormous efforts that Marna and Mark and her team have entered into. Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, guys. There is no question. You guys have an incredible world-class asset. It is nice to see that the power situation is catching up as a result of your hard work. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. Andrew Mikitchook at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Just a quick question on the Western Forelands. Can you give us any sense of how the drilling since the last resource has been kind of divided? Should we expect a much more material impact onto Makoko, Makoko West versus Kitoko? Or just so we have an idea of when we look at the old numbers, where there should be the most impact?
Thank you. Andrew, it's nice to hear your voice. This is Robert Friedland. I've been in the mineral exploration business for 40 years. I think you should exercise patience. We're going to 11 drill rigs, and we will reveal everything. As you know, we need independent appraisement of what we've done. It's always a backward-looking look to last March. In a few weeks, we can have another conference call to explain what the independent engineers are saying. It does say something that we've increased our drilling budget, and only God knows what may ultimately be found in the Western Forelands, and she may change her mind. Give us a few more weeks, and these independent numbers will be opening soon at a theater near you.
Mostly expected that answer. Thank you, Robert. And thank you to the team for all the detail and the power and the success you've had there. I'll sign off.
Thank you, Andrew.
Thank you. There are no further questions on the line. I'll turn the call back over to Matthew Keevil.
Thanks very much, operator. We are running up against time here with our 60 minutes, so we will conclude the call here today. I'd like to thank everyone once again for attending today's event. We look forward to speaking with you again soon on the many more exciting milestones to come in 2025. As Robert mentioned, do pay attention to the upcoming resource update on Western Foreland and the forthcoming call on that. With that, thank you very much. Operator, you can wrap up the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.