Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer period. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, September 8, 2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Tommy Horton, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Yes, my name is Tommy Horton. I am the Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Ivanhoe Mines. I am delighted to welcome you to our Western Forelands Mineral Resource Update conference call. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, September 8, 2026. On the line with me today from Ivanhoe Mines, we have Founder and Co-chairman, Robert Friedland. Executive Co-chairman, Robert Friedland. President and Chief Executive Officer, Marna Cloete. Executive Vice President for Corporate Development, Alex Pickard. Executive Vice President Technical Services, Simon Bottoms. Our Vice President for Geosciences, Tim Williams. We will finish today's event with a question and answer session. You can submit questions using the Q&A box on the webcast page, as well as through the conference operator via the phone line.
If we are unable to answer any questions today, then we do encourage participants to contact our investor relations team, and we will endeavor to respond to any of your unanswered questions. Before we begin, I would 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 our forward-looking statements are contained in this morning's press release, as well as on SEDAR+ and on our website at www.ivanhoemines.com. It is now my pleasure to hand over to Ivanhoe Mines Founder and Executive Co-chairman, Robert Friedland, for his opening remarks. Our President and Chief Executive Officer, Marna Cloete, for their opening remarks. Robert and Marna, please go ahead.
Well, since I am in transit addressing all of you from New York, I have to fly to Washington, D.C. We are just beginning the period where we remember 9/11, 2001, was actually 25 years ago. This image was taken in 2008. If I do my math, 26, 16, this was 18 years ago. In that orange shirt, I am standing there with Dave Broughton and Dave Edwards at the very first drill hole for the discovery of sedimentary copper in the Western Forelands basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although that 18 years has gone very quickly, this is the kind of timeframe it takes in the mining industry to do something new. During that period, I would say Congo is probably number six or number eight or number nine in the production of copper on the world ranking.
Congo has leapfrogged up to number two, passing Peru as the largest producer of the metal. That is through the discovery of this type of copper, which is completely different from the porphyry coppers, so many of which are slowly dying as their grades are declining in Latin America. This sedimentary copper is like oil field geology. It is completely different. It is like finding a liquid that once you find it just keeps going. This basin, which contains this copper, is the richest source of copper metal on our planet. If we were coming from Mars and our flying saucers were made out of green cheese and our masters ran Mars, we would have to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo to look for copper and incidentally, a lot of other critical metals that are necessary for our modern existence.
This was a test or a theory that the copper belt went further to the west, and the geology was obscured by what geologists call aeolian sand. Aeolian sand is a fancy way of saying the sand blew in from the Kalahari Desert. It obscured the underlying geology. In Eastern Congo, further to the east, there was so much copper in the soil the trees couldn't grow. They call those copper clearings in a place like Tenke Fungurume, the Belgians found the copper sticking out of the ground. But where the sand had blown in from the Kalahari Desert, the geology was obscured, and we decided to go out there into terra incognita, and there it is. Hole number 1. It is sort of a humble beginning. Dave Edwards there on the right with the yellow hat, he stayed there for 10 years and had his babies right there.
He never went back to England. He just was so dedicated. Dave Broughton came from the Colorado School of Mines. I knew his PhD professor, Murray Hitzman, who ran the geology department there. I know we must have had 100 people from the Colorado School of Mines come to the Congo now. That is the discovery of copper in the Western Forelands, and today we are announcing that another discovery has occurred there on ground that exists outside of our joint venture, Zijin Mining. It is a ground held only by Ivanhoe Mines. It is an area about six times larger than our joint venture area, and it is growing faster in high-grade copper than anywhere in the world.
Now, if you think of a basin as being shaped like a bowl, the original discovery was 200, 300 meters deep. About as deep as the height of the Eiffel Tower, for example, if you stand up and look at the Eiffel Tower. But we have now found the edge of the basin, so the lip of the bowl is coming up to the surface, and the same style of mineralization is not only open pitable, but will constitute some of the world's, if not the world's highest grade open pit mines for copper. That is extremely significant to the growth of Ivanhoe Mines because we own all of this resource. We don't share it 50/50 with any other partner. While there is no shortage of people that are interested in joining our efforts in the Western Forelands, this is the world's single best location to find high-grade copper.
We do not even count the copper if it is less than 1%, even if it is open pitable. Our cut-off grade is much higher in grade than the largest copper mines in the world in Latin America. Applying open pit mining to these grades is going to propel a very rapid additional period of growth in the company, and that is why I am so happy to announce this today. Amazingly enough, we are making this announcement on a day that copper is trading at the highest nominal price in the history of our species. We will be talking about it in Washington, D.C. later today and later this month. With that, I have made my opening remarks. I will try to stay for 10 or 15 more minutes, but I am in transit. This will be turned over to Marna and the very capable hands of our technical people.
Thank you very much, Marna. Go right ahead.
Thank you, Robert. I can mainly echo some of the comments you made. Of course, we timed it to make this announcement on the day that copper is at an all-time high. Very excited to show that we have grown our resource that we announced or that we updated last year with 30%. The team has been working all out on the Western Forelands. It is important to note for everybody listening that the Western Forelands is a multitude of licenses. We basically own 35 different licenses on that land package. Kamoa-Kakula is a portion of that. The announcement today pertains to three different licenses. It is, like Robert always says, an ocean of copper out there. There are still many unexplored licenses that we are still getting access to.
This is really just a start. If we think about creating shareholder value, adding copper, more copper to our portfolio, you cannot find it cheaper in the world. We pay less than a penny a pound of copper discovered. This is the way that Ivanhoe has made its name, and Ivanhoe intends to grow over the next couple of years. I am not going to bore you with more details. I am going to ask our team to take you through our exploration agenda, also talk you through the resource update. We will start with Alex, who will give you a bit of an overview about today's announcement. Over to you, Alex.
Thank you, Marna, and thank you, Robert, for the opening remarks. It's Alex Pickard first to try and set the scene, although I think the scene has been very well set there by both of you, so I'm sure I'll be recapping to some extent. You can go to the next slide please, Tommy. This map is really just showing the scale of the Western Forelands licenses. As Marna mentioned, this is a district. It's a collection of more than 30 licenses spanning 2,500 sq km, so six times the ` size of the Kamoa-Kakula mining complex, which is one of the largest copper discoveries in history, which is highlighted in the red. If you look at it sort of laterally, it's 120 km from tip to tip, southwest to northeast. So it's a very large portfolio of exploration properties that we've been systematically exploring.
The focus today is on the mineral resource update in the Makoko district, so a very small part of the overall picture. You can see that new mineral resource outlined in red. Makoko District is a cluster of deposits that have now been joined together into one sort of complete picture. That's Makoko West, and Kitoko. Just recapping on something that Robert mentioned there, what is very important is that Ivanhoe Mines controls this district, up to a maximum 80% shareholding as stipulated by the DRC Mining Code, where the government will have a 10% interest and 10% will be for the benefit of Congolese nationals. So that leaves a lot of flexibility in terms of how we think about the Western Forelands going forwards.
We love this chart because I think it really puts into perspective the scale and the quality of what Ivanhoe Mines has achieved at Kamoa-Kakula, and then more recently in the Western Forelands over the last 20 or 30 years that Robert was referring to. This is by far and away the largest copper discovery or copper system discovered for many decades. We are now over 55 million tons of contained copper and counting. So that's more than two times the global annual mine supply in terms of the discovered copper in this region. As Robert mentioned, 30 years ago, it was thought to be completely unprospective. Tim Williams will give you a great overview of the exploration journey we've been through in the Western Forelands.
What sets the district apart, and has always set us apart, is the grade that we've managed to continue through our exploration in this sedimentary basin. So, roughly in the range of 2%-2.5% copper. The Western Forelands is a very similar resource grade on the whole to Kamoa-Kakula, and that is an order of magnitude greater than the global average of 0.62%. Although, as we see copper grades continue to decline and mines get older and older, there's many operations substantially below 0.5%, even below 0.3% or 0.2% is not uncommon these days. Even more important, I think, in the context that we're now thinking about open-pit mining, which is something that Simon Bottoms will touch on later on. Next slide please, Tommy.
This slide is also just highlighting some of the key differentiating factors why we firmly believe this is the best copper hunting ground in the world. I mentioned it before, but we show it again. The grade is the major differentiator. 1.8%-2.7% copper is the range of the indicated and inferred resource grade. That has huge implications from an operating cost and from a capital cost point of view. Looking at the exploration cost, this is also a statistic that we like very much. Basically, we are looking at the total cost of exploration, including all of the setup costs, including all of the drilling, and dividing that by the denominator, which is the amount of copper that we have discovered, and we get to a cost of actually below $10 per ton of copper discovered.
I think Marna and Robert both mentioned it, but today we sit here with copper breaking $14,800 per ton as compared to less than $10 per ton discovery cost. It is difficult to find benchmarks across the industry, but we did find numbers in the range of $200 per ton. So we are a fraction of that, which really speaks to the return on investment that we get from our drilling. In terms of development timelines and CapEx intensity, these are not really estimates, these are actually proven from what we have done at Kamoa-Kakula. We developed Kamoa-Kakula from drill hole to production in a five-year or six-year timeline. That is the benefit to being shallow and being high grade. The CapEx intensity, a similar story. We were well below $10,000 per ton at Kamoa-Kakula and expect that Western Forelands will be in that region.
I think we have spoken enough about the land package, but we really have the dominant position in this style of geology and in this basin. My final slide here, just to set the scene, is that I suppose despite copper trading at close to $15,000 per ton, the industry success rate at discovering new deposits is pitifully low. That is not really for any lack of trying or any lack of expenditure. You can see that really we are in a declining environment when it comes to copper discoveries, especially in the last 10 years. I think Ivanhoe Mines has been responsible for much more than its fair share of those discoveries. With that as a lead in, I will hand over to Tim Williams, our VP of Geosciences, who will bring you up to speed on the developments from the Western Forelands.
Thank you very much, Alex, and good morning to everybody. I think it is going to be hard to add or beat on what Robert and Marna have mentioned, but what I would like to do is just take you through a little bit of a voyage of discovery, in terms of the discovery history of Makoko and how it actually ties into the Western Foreland picture. Just looking at the graphic in front of you, that is just a number of members of our team and over 250,000 meters of core that we have amounted drilling on the Western Foreland in the last eight or nine years. Next slide, please, Tommy. I think just looking at this from a geological perspective and zooming into the western side of the DRC Copperbelt.
In the center of the picture on your right-hand side is Kolwezi, which is really the locus of the copper cobalt deposits that make up the vast majority of the mines that were previously identified in the D.R.C. Copperbelt. When we take a look at the background to the Western Foreland discoveries, starting with Kamoa in 2008, there was very little confidence in this area known as the Western Foreland shelf as being prospective. It really took the discovery of Kamoa and Kakula another eight years after 2008 to actually turn that story around and turn this Western Foreland shelf into a very exciting and highly prospective area for these high-grade, high tonnage sediment-hosted copper deposits.
What sets these deposits apart from the D.R.C. Copperbelt style of mineralization is everything to the east of Kolwezi and including the Kolwezi area itself, are copper cobalt dominated. On a line which is roughly demarcated by that black fault line, is copper dominated. When we look at the Western Foreland shelf style of mineralization, we see that this copper mineralization is largely sediment hosted. It is, to a large extent, unfaulted, which is not what we see in the Kolwezi area and the Tenke Fungurume area. It is hosted higher up in the stratigraphic sequence, which is really the reason that it was never discovered in the past. It really just talks to the original strategy, which was really go beyond the areas that have been looked at before, step out into the unknown, embrace uncertainty, and test new geological ideas.
These ideas were really work that was coming off of the MIRACLE work that was carried out by the Colorado School of Mines that Robert mentioned earlier on in the piece, starting in about the early 2000s. We can go to the next slide, please, Tommy. Just looking at this in terms of the discovery of Makoko. Makoko was discovered two years after the discovery of Kakula. There was an element of projection and trendology, and the first hole was effectively drilled directly east of Kakula on trend. The discovery hole was drilled in 2018, picking up mineralization at depths of 300-400 meters below surface. From 2018 through to the announcement of the maiden resource, which came out in September of 2023, there was 61,000 meters of diamond drilling completed on very wide-spaced holes initially.
You can see the fence lines of holes spaced roughly 1 km apart from the top northeastern corner down to the southwest. Those fence lines picked up two broad trends, and ultimately led to the definition of just short of 5 million tons of contained copper in roughly 280 million tons of resource. If we go to the next slide, this is really now talking to the rapid discovery of additional resources. You can see the significant growth, not only in the meters completed. So between 2023, the maiden resource, and the 2025 disclosure update, 86,000 meters of drilling was completed. That drilling largely focused on extension of the resource to the southwest, into the Makoko West area, and it included the discovery of Kitoko down dip of Makoko West.
Those holes were all still very widely spaced, and it is this wide-spaced drilling and the lateral continuity of the sediment-hosted copper style of mineralization that allows the discovery of copper at the rate that was mentioned earlier. For every 1,000 meters of drilling, we are discovering in the region of about 45,000 tons of copper. If we go to the next slide, this really now talks to the current estimate and disclosure. From the end of 2024, which was the data cut-off for the 2025 resource estimate, to March of this year, we completed another 64,000 meters of diamond drilling. This program of drilling has really extended the mineralization from roughly 13 km along strike in the 2025 update to 16 km along strike.
You can also see that quite a number of the gaps that were indicated on the previous slide have now been closed off, and we've also started to tighten up the infill drilling in certain areas of the resource, certainly where there was indications of higher grade. The message that I'd like to leave you with is that the successive updates of this resource have seen anywhere from a 30% update or increase in resource tonnage, as we see from 2025 to 2026, to as much as a 50%. Well, in fact, sorry, a lot more, close to a 90% increase from 2023 to 2025. The story is not finished, and we certainly believe that the mineralization is open-ended, both along strike. If you look at the far eastern side of the graphic, we have started very wide-spaced drilling there at roughly 800-meter centers.
The intention is that progressively as we go forward, we will continue to tighten up on the drilling and bring those resources which are currently in the exploration results category into the inferred and progressively into the indicated category. We are currently sitting at a 12-million-ton contained copper resource. Simon will speak a little bit more about the definition of that resource. But I think if we go to the next slide, Tommy Horton, if we can just state that the story's not completed. There's a significant amount of drilling still to come, not only in this year through to the end of December, but also planned into 2027 and 2028. The three main areas that we are looking at growth in the Makoko area or Makoko District.
If we look at it in green, numbered 1 there, we are testing a thick zone of +3% copper, which is down dip of Makoko West. That is certainly an area that we would like to bring into the pre-feasibility study going forward. Just to the northeast of that, we have the second zone there, which is really testing an undrilled zone northeast of Kitoko and a connection between Makoko West and Makoko. Then on the far right or eastern side of the resource, where I mentioned we have already embarked on a very wide-spaced drilling program. We will be coming in with tighter drilling, which will then bring that resource area into the inferred and indicated category. The story is that we continue to add to the resource.
We anticipate that the infill drilling will uplift the resource from a largely inferred resource to a significant proportion, 30%-40%, being brought into the indicated category. That indicated category will be to a large extent the zero to 400-meter depth echelon. Go to the next slide, please. This really talks to the continued commitment of Ivanhoe to drilling on the Western Foreland, and particularly in the west in the Makoko area. One can see the progressively increasing expenditures on exploration, and 2027 is going to be no different. Current year, 2026, we anticipate spending $40 million on exploration on the Western Forelands, and we anticipate the number for 2027 to be upwards or round about the 30%-50% increase on that number. Go to the next slide, please. This is the final slide in my section.
I think this really just talks to our exploration strategy within the Central African Copper Belts. If we take a look at on the far northern part of this graphic, that is really the focus around Kolwezi and the Kamoa-Kakula and Makoko Western Foreland area, and that's really been the first part of this strategy. Back in 2023, we acquired a very large land package in Angola, which is the step out four in the far southwestern area. Last year, we picked up 7,700 sq kms in Zambia. These domains have been picked up primarily because of the potential of the Western Foreland style of mineralization, but also because they are largely sand covered, and to Robert's point earlier, covered under a blanket of Eolian Kalahari Sands.
This is both a challenge but also an opportunity, and the opportunity is that nobody else has been able to look through these. We are making use of a number of sophisticated geophysical techniques for mapping and followed up with diamond drilling and air core drilling. We hope to be able to add to this Western Foreland success story progressively as we come to grips with our exploration targets in both Zambia and Angola. Thank you very much. With that, I'll hand over to Simon.
Thanks, Tim. If we turn to the next slide, please, Tommy. As Tim has already alluded to earlier, with only 150 kms of additional drilling over the last two and a half years since the original maiden resource, our estimates of the copper endowment within the Western Forelands have grown by almost 250%. With this, we're very confident that this growth will continue as we incorporate the additional 60 kms of drilling, which has not yet been captured by this mineral resource estimate. During the same period, as highlighted by Robert, Marna, and Alex, we've seen significant growth in the copper price, which not only underpins the potential value of the Western Forelands, but also is a clear indication of the scarcity of such a high-quality undeveloped copper asset within the current global setting.
Turning to the next slide, to put the significance of the Western Forelands deposit into context, here we tried to benchmark the updated 2026 mineral resource against other major copper discoveries of the past decade. This clearly shows the standout of both scale and grade of the Western Forelands deposits. For us, we feel it is clear that the Western Foreland sits within a district-scale copper system with both the size and quality to compare favorably to some of the most important discoveries and geological belts elsewhere in the world. The ranking of the Western Forelands should be viewed in context of the global setting and, as I will talk to you shortly, about its nearby access to existing infrastructure. The important point here is since the 2023 maiden resource, not only has the copper price significantly increased, but so has our mineral resource.
Now as we move to the next phases of development in the project, we expect not only to continue to grow the resource, but to step into a new phase of project scoping and development. Now turning to the next slide. Here we illustrate the various phases of infill drilling, which we are currently planning to execute over approximately the next 28 months, where we intend to convert prospectivity into mineable confidence. Commencing later this year, we are planning two complementary drilling programs. Firstly, a phase of shallow drilling to test the large-scale open pit opportunities, alongside some deeper drilling to define high-grade mineralization potentially suitable for shallow underground mining. This will then be followed with a substantial pre-production infill program that will position the open pit targets to be potentially shovel-ready by the end of 2028. Turning to the next slide.
The shallow, gently dipping subcropping mineralization in the Western Forelands will potentially support a series of open pits, which could be mined at a low cost with a relatively low strip ratio, whilst alongside higher grade underground accesses can be developed concurrently. This concept is key for a potentially lower capital startup to the Western Forelands, with initial underground production focusing on shallow high-grade resources for rapid and simple development timeline, with quick payback of the initial project capital. Concurrent production from both open pit and underground operations not only generates significant operational flexibility, but also supports substantial potential multi-decade production profiles. In the top right-hand corner of this slide, we show a conceptual cross-section of an open pit to demonstrate how these shallow dipping, high-grade and subcropping mineral resources potentially lend themselves very well to shallow open pit mining methods. Now turning to the next slide.
This gives us a snapshot of our expected timeline for the initial infill drill programs, alongside the progression of other project activities, including perimeter fencing, construction of the initial project and operations camp, alongside environmental and social studies completed in line with international ICMM and IFC standards. We expect that the drilling in 2027 will provide the key framework to be able to define the development pathway as part of the project scoping work. Alongside this, concurrent infill drilling will provide the higher confidence conversion for the commencement of pre-feasibility studies later on in the year. Turning over the slide. Looking to Kamoa-Kakula, we feel this provides a highly relevant operating template where we can draw synergies from in both the successful development and operation of new potential mines within the district.
As highlighted on this slide, this includes geological knowledge, reliable power, transport, processing, and regional smelting capacity, as well as strong relationships with host communities and governments. Not to mention the Western Forelands with the potential benefit to the immediate proximity to the Lobito corridor, allowing significant synergies for offtake. Ivanhoe has almost three decades of experience working in the DRC. Turning to the final slide, here we see how Kamoa-Kakula provides a proxy of what can be achieved in this geological setting, where initial production started in just under six years from the initial discovery. Not to mention the exceptional capital intensity of these ore bodies, which clearly stands out relative to other industry benchmarks.
We feel this is a clear analogy of how these high-grade sediment-hosted copper projects in the Western Forelands can be developed to produce globally significant mines through phased development within an area with significant existing regional infrastructure. This blueprint is clear context for what we feel can be achieved at the Western Forelands in a world where we are hitting all-time record demand levels for copper as a critical metal, as already mentioned by Robert Friedland, Marna Cloete, and Alex Pickard at the beginning of this presentation. With that, I'll hand you back over to Tommy Horton for questions.
Thanks, Simon Bottoms. We will now begin the question answer session. Covering analysts, you may submit your questions to the operator via the phone line. Questions can also be submitted through the webcast. Any questions submitted through the webcast we're unable to address, our investor relations team will endeavor to follow up with you. Operator, let's start by clearing the phone lines. Do we have anyone waiting?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touch tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. If you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two, and please lift the handset before pressing any keys if you're on a speakerphone. Question on the line from Andrew Mikitchook with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Congratulations to the technical team on this really quick success in the scale of how long it usually takes people to advance these things. Maybe if we have Tim, if Tim could come back on the line and just give us some sense of the concept of the eastern extension from Makoko, or from the resource that was published this morning, towards Kakula West, and how the prospectivity in that direction looks. From the simplicity of us sitting in our offices, there's clear linear trends connecting those two. But is there any geological insight that we should be considering when we armchair geology this from where we are?
Thanks, Andrew. Tommy, if you can just skip to slide 13. I think that's probably a good one to talk to. Andrew, in terms of the connection between Makoko and Kakula West, there's probably a good 8 kms between the two, and the direction of travel, if you look at the high grades there, is more northeast, southwest than it is directly east. But the drilling that we've carried out there does indicate that the basin is actually getting deeper as we go to the southeast, and that's probably the direction towards Kakula West itself. The area that we're more excited about is really where you see those orange circles, those are denoting holes that have been completed, and you can see the grade there is 2%-3%, and it really shows the strike of the higher grade zone.
The intention is to actually chase that out further to the east. And it's at a deepening resource, so we're probably looking in a range of about 600 meters below surface in that direction. What is also an area that we haven't tested, and we're only just starting to complete the holes now, you can see this gap area where we have 2023 outline written in black text there. That area is now currently being drilled out, and that's a lot shallower than that Makoko East area, and we are looking to close that area out in the coming six months or so. If we look at that area of what I described earlier as exploration results, the intention is to convert that into the inferred category in this coming year.
And we're probably looking at a similar uplift in metal from last year to this year to what we would see in the coming period once we close that out. So, easily another 30% on the resource just as we see it there. I don't know if that answers all of your question.
No, that's perfect. Thank you very much for guiding our thoughts on that. Again, congratulations to the team. This is very quick progress and I'll put the microphone down and let others ask questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, for any questions on the line, please press star one now. There appear to be no further questions on the phone. I'll turn the call back over to Tommy Horton.
Many thanks, operator. We have a couple of questions through on the webcast. First one here is, "What are our plans with respect to the next resource estimate? There is clearly further copper to be included in the resource estimate. Do we have an idea on timing, and will this be before or after or during a PEA or scoping study in our case?
Tommy, I think I can take that question as well. In terms of the planned drilling that Simon alluded to, our first phase of infill will be completed by February of next year. That takes us down to 200-meter depth. The second phase takes us through to the end of May, and at that point, we will rerun the resource estimate. From an expansion drilling point of view, the main expansion drilling really takes place from the end of May through to August next year. If we're looking at adding additional resources rather than conversion of inferred to indicated, I would say that August of next year or beyond August of next year would probably be the appropriate timing. But I think it's actually quite important to indicate the conversion of resources from the inferred category to a much higher confidence level.
That is going to be a very broad echelon, and I anticipate that the way that we have planned it out at this stage, that we are likely to see anywhere from a 30%-40% uplift from the inferred category into the indicated category.
Okay. Thank you, Tim. Next question that has come in is related to partnership. This is probably a question for Alex Pickard or Marna Cloete. Whether there is any interest that we have in partnering like we did at Kamoa-Kakula, and would this be an avenue for financing additional exploration, or would we plan to do that ourselves?
Yeah. Thanks, Tommy Horton. I am happy to take that one. I think Robert Friedland alluded to it at the top of the call. There is no shortage of interest in terms of people looking to partner with us on the Western Forelands, and I think that is going back to the context in terms of the scarcity of new deposits of copper out there, and especially at this quality and this sort of development timeline. So there are plenty of people who are interested in partnership opportunities. We evaluate all proposals carefully, and I think there is a story here that we could daylight a huge amount of value for the Western Forelands that is not realized today in our share price, arguably.
You could probably fund not just the exploration expenditures, I think you could probably fund a material share of our project equity to actually take the Western Forelands to first production by bringing in a partner at the right level. So that is something that we will consider, but it is by no means a necessity. I think the company has the balance sheet and the strength, certainly, to take this project forwards. Even though we have a great commitment to increasing our exploration expenditure, as Tim Williams said, we will probably spend significantly more than the $40 million next year. It is still relatively small scale expenditure in the grand scheme of things at this point in time until we start major development.
You always have that kind of balance of when's the right time to think about doing that deal once you've reached the kind of scale and the realization of the scale and the quality of the asset that you are sitting on. We take all those things into consideration.
Super. Thanks, Alex. Maybe this might be one for Simon. The next question is talking about the path to first production and we did touch on the sort of the major milestones, but what would be the critical path? What would be things that may impact uncertainty over timeline? Just a sort of overview on permitting and how would that fit into being either on the critical path or not?
I think the key thing will be, as we showed on the timeline, will be the progressing from the initial expansion drilling through to the more detailed infill conversion drilling that Tim has alluded to. Project permitting, we've already commenced the environmental baselines. We're already progressing a number of the studies required for the permitting. Permitting is not on the critical timeframe. It's more the us progressing the definition of the ore bodies and the mine designs concurrently to a point at which we're able to commence full reserve level pre-feasibility and feasibility engineering. As we alluded to on the timeline earlier, I'd expect we're targeting for the end of 2028 to be, essentially, shovel-ready with the open pit portions, and probably not long thereafter with the underground portions, with the shallow portions of the underground mineralization.
Okay. Thank you, Simon. Got another question here on the ownership. Could we clarify the 80% ownership across the Makoko district and Kakula, or is this just Makoko on its own? Maybe that's a question for Alex.
Yeah. I will try to answer, Tommy. The vast majority of Makoko is already at the 80% ownership level because that has already been converted to a mining right. There are licenses in the Western Forelands where we own up to 100%, but those are generally earlier stage exploration rights where you have not gone through the conversion process to a mining right, whereby the government and D.R.C. nationals will hold a 20% ownership position. Then there are some licenses in the Western Forelands where we are earning in through a joint venture structure where we started at an opening interest of 54%, and over time, the intention is that we will increase that ownership up to the 80% level through expenditures, but that does not apply to Makoko. Makoko is already at 80%.
Thank you, Simon. Sorry, Alex. Next question is on infrastructure within the D.R.C. related to electricity as well as domestic smelting capability. Are these on the critical path in terms of project development? Is there anything that we would need to do in terms of investing in these two areas as part of the project development plan?
I am happy to take that, Tommy, and perhaps Simon might have some things to add. Look, I think they are not on the critical path in terms of what we need to get done right now. There is smelting capacity in the D.R.C. There is obviously some smelting capacity at Kamoa-Kakula, but the intention is that certainly on the development timeline of the Western Forelands, Kamoa-Kakula will be filling its smelter capacity of 500,000 tons. But the Kamoa-Kakula smelter has opened up regional smelting capacity, including the Lualaba copper smelter in Kolwezi. So, 20 odd kilometers down the road from Kamoa-Kakula and probably a little bit further from the Western Forelands, but by no means a long way. So the regional smelting capacity, in a nutshell, is not really a concern, and the export routes and the logistics, as Simon touched on, are only improving.
In terms of the power we have, we have sufficient power in terms of what we need to get done today. It is relatively small scale sort of project development operations. As we think about moving into full scale construction, then we will be obviously well ahead of the curve in terms of where we need to be planning for our expected power demand. But I think there are some real breakthroughs that we are making right now at Kamoa-Kakula in terms of the modular solar battery solutions. Those projects can be delivered in an 18- 24-month timeline. So that is why I say they are not on the critical path today, but at some point they will be.
Thanks, Alex. Question for Tim and maybe Simon as well. Just some confusion over the open pit and underground with respect to the ore that will be processed. What is the makeup of the ore? Is it oxide, transitional, sulfide? Is it a single plant that we would look to build to process the material coming from open pit and underground?
Yeah, sure. It's all fresh sulfide mineralization and the sub cropping mineralization. Whilst the top immediate 10- 20 meters does contain some oxidized copper, predominantly, and we've seen from drilling that immediately within 30- 40 meters from surface, you have full fresh sulfide. So it would only ever require a sulfide processing facility. There would be no need for additional oxide processing.
Thank you, Simon. We've got a few more minutes for questions. I've got a few left here. One, Tim, for you. In terms of the exploration experience and knowledge that you've gained within the Western Forelands, how is that playing into the global exploration portfolio, in Zambia and in Angola with respect to seeing a structural geology that is similar and are these countries seeing equal prospectivity that could generate something that we have already delineated at the Western Forelands?
Well, quite a bit in that question. I think the easier answer to that is really it all stems from an understanding of the mineral system. We make use of an approach referred to as the mineral system approach, where one looks at the mineralization, not just from the actual rock host, but rather understanding in terms of the geodynamic setting within which the mineralization has been emplaced, the nature of the fluids that have moved that mineralization from its source to its ultimate preservation site, and then the various elements around the structural conduits and the host rocks themselves. So looking at that from a Central African copper-belt basin point of view, we've certainly got a good understanding of the nature of this mineral system, and that is actually being applied on a much broader level into the work that we are doing now in Zambia and DRC.
And maybe also just to take a bit of a bold step into the work that we have embarked on now in Kazakhstan. All of these learnings are being applied and are actively being followed up and chased down in the different environments, so whether it is in Zambia, Angola, or Kazakhstan. It also adds to the growing portfolio of licenses outside of those existing areas that we are looking at. It will continue to grow and morph as this understanding improves and I think as we test out various hypotheses. What is really quite unique about the Ivanhoe experience is the latitude that we have been given to test out multiple mineralization hypotheses without judgment. I think with a freedom that is somewhat unsurpassed in the industry.
Super. Thanks, Tim. We have got one last question, and this is to Simon, and it is related to the MSO method that we have used with the resource estimate. What does this mean, and how does this relate to open pit and the underground resources, or the open pit and underground resources that we plan to mine?
The MSO is mineable shape optimizer. What it is, it represents one of the NI 43-101 principles of reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction. What it does is it essentially takes the geological block model. We then constrain it to a set of minimum mining widths and minimum mining heights, and then use the optimizer to define overall mineable envelope with continuous mining fronts. What that does is it removes isolated, scattered blocks that would actually be noneconomic to develop from the reported resource and makes the resource a much more conservative resource and has a much higher conversion rate generally from resource through to future potential reserve or mine design conversions as a result of that. For now, we have wrapped the whole resource within a 1% cut-off MSO shape. Effectively, we have constrained the entire mineral resource by an underground mineable envelope.
But as I spoke to earlier and showed with the imminent drilling within some of the shallow sub cropping mineralization, we expect to convert some of this to the upper portions within the top 150 to 200 meters to a number of open pits. The open pits will come at a lower cut-off grade, so you would expect that cut-off grade to reduce down to below 0.5% copper. With that, you will get further growth in the mineral resources within those open pit potential areas relative to what is being reported in the existing MSO. Then the interface between the open pits and the underground, again, is going back to that conceptual section as shown because of the shallow dipping nature of the ore bodies.
Any crown pillars between the open pit areas and the underground actually only cover a very, very small portion of the mineralization, and you can still have a significant size crown pillar. The opportunity is there that you actually sterilize very, very little of your overall mineral resource within your crown pillar between the open pit and underground. Really, in summary, it is a much more conservative method of reporting a mineral resource and representing current industry best practice, but also presents a, I suppose, a significant opportunity for further mineral resource growth as we continue to work through the scoping study and d efine, split the ore body up into open pit and underground sections.
Okay. Thank you, Simon. Unless, operator, there is anyone on the phone lines, I believe we will conclude our call. Thank you everyone for attending Ivanhoe Mines at Western Forelands 2026 Mineral Resource Update call. We look forward to speaking to you soon on our further exciting milestones ahead.