Ivanhoe disputes Zijin's account of damage at Kakula mine

A rare public rift opened between the joint-venture partners at Kamoa-Kakula this week, after Ivanhoe Mines disputed a claim by China's Zijin Mining Group about the extent of damage caused by seismic activity at their shared Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ivanhoe had announced a temporary suspension of underground activity at Kakula on 20 May following seismic events, saying the western section of the mine had been declared safe for operations to resume imminently. But the Canadian miner said it disagreed with Zijin's account of "multiple roof-falling and rib-spalling in the eastern section" of the mine, as described in a Zijin news release earlier in the week.

Competing narratives

"Preliminary indications suggest that seismic activity resulted in a redistribution of forces underground and caused 'scaling', or rock falls, from the sidewalls of certain mining areas," Ivanhoe said in its own statement, adding that a full investigation remained under way. Zijin had also warned that the mine might miss its annual production guidance — a claim Ivanhoe likewise rejected at the time, saying its senior management and geotechnical specialists were still completing a comprehensive inspection. "Results so far show that there is no evidence of collapsing stopes or structural pillars," the company said.

BMO Capital Markets, in a note published the same week, said the information available did not yet point to a material financial impact from the disruption.

Why the disagreement mattered

The public disagreement between two of Kamoa-Kakula's largest shareholders was unusual for a joint venture that had, until then, presented a united front on the project's rapid growth. It reflected the difficulty of assessing underground rock-mass behaviour in real time, and perhaps also different incentives: Zijin, as a Chinese-listed company reporting under different disclosure norms, may have had more reason to flag downside risk early, while Ivanhoe's Toronto-listed stock was already reeling from the initial shutdown news.

Within a week, the disagreement would be overtaken by events, as Ivanhoe itself withdrew its production guidance and confirmed that the eastern section of Kakula had indeed flooded extensively — vindicating, in substance if not in framing, much of what Zijin had first warned.

Sources

• Mining.com: Ivanhoe disputes Zijin's claims on Kakula mine suspension, 23 May 2025

Photo: Malachite copper ore from the Democratic Republic of Congo's copperbelt. Kritzolina, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.