Progress on project Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines has unveiled the completion of the Shaft 1 production changeover at the mi-ner’s Platreef palladium, rhodium, nickel, platinum, copper and gold pro-ject in South Africa.
“Shaft 1 will serve as Platreef's initial production shaft and is approxima-tely 450 metres away from the first high-grade area of the Flatreef ore-body scheduled to be mined during Phase 1 production. On April 22, 2022, Ivanplats celebrated the first blast at Platreef’s 950-metre level, marking the commencement of lateral mine development, with first pro-duction anticipated in the third quarter of 2024,” the business said in a statement.
Robert Friedland, the executive co-chair of Ivanhoe Mines, said that “Platreef is very scalable. The Phase 1 mine is only the beginning of a multi-stage, multi-generational mining complex underpinned by an enormous, high-grade resource and vast exploration upside. Future ex-pansions to 12 million tonnes of ore per annum and beyond, as de-monstrated in previous studies, would position Platreef among the world’s largest and lowest-cost nickel and PGM mines”.