Friedland sees growth opportunities as US looks to DRC for critical minerals

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. sees plenty of growth opportunities as “the penny has finally dropped” on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s importance in supplying critical minerals to the US and other Western economies.

“We’re in continuous dialog with all the world’s major mining companies and sovereign investors, and we see a lot of opportunity to grow our company,” Ivanhoe’s billionaire founder and co-chairman, Robert Friedland, told analysts on an earnings call Thursday.

With vast mining assets in the DRC, Vancouver-based Ivanhoe plans to open offices in New York and Washington DC as executives work to understand the US government’s viewpoint, he said.

Friedland, 75, who is behind some of the world’s biggest new copper mines, has been speaking publicly for years about looming shortages of critical materials and the frailties of Western supply chains. Earlier this month, he participated in the launch of the Trump administration’s minerals stockpile program, Project Vault.

“It’s fair to say that the US places the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the highest order of priority internationally,” he said.

In the DRC, Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula complex has just started shipping smelted copper to Germany as it continues to drill a massive exploration project called Western Foreland. With copper recently added to a US list of critical minerals, it has become well understood that smelting and refining is “absolutely critical to America’s national security,” Friedland said.

Interest from prospective investors in Western Foreland is “nearly infinite,” he said.

“I have never in my lifetime seen the intensity and the focus of interest in the expansion of mineral development, not only in the Congo and in Zambia and in Angola and in South Africa, but around the world,” he said. “There’s a more sober understanding now that all critical materials depend largely on Africa for their development.”

(By James Attwood)