$825-million financing in reach for Ivanhoe’s Arizona copper project

TUCSON, April 15, 2025 – Ivanhoe Electric has received a Letter of Interest from the US Export-Import Bank for up to USD 825 million in debt financing for its Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona, the company said on Tuesday.

The proposed financing, offered under the EXIM Bank’s Make More in America initiative, includes a 15-year repayment tenor and supports the project’s goal of strengthening domestic copper supply chains. The initiative is designed to increase the United States’ access to critical minerals and reduce strategic vulnerabilities.

“Receipt of the Export-Import Bank of the United States’ Letter of Interest underscores the importance of our Santa Cruz copper project to grow domestic copper production,” executive chairman Robert Friedland said.

“The United States urgently needs more domestically produced copper to support the rapid expansion and rebuilding of its electric transmission and transportation infrastructure, national defence capabilities, and technologies of the future. Santa Cruz is positioned perfectly to be a source of pure copper cathode to help the United States achieve its strategic mission of greater self-reliance on domestic production of critical metals.”

“We are grateful for this strong show of support by the Export-Import Bank of the United States for the development of our Santa Cruz copper project,” president and CEO Taylor Melvin said. “The people of the EXIM Bank have devoted significant time to learning about our project and are committed to supporting the growth of US critical metals production. We look forward to working together with the EXIM Bank to advance this significant financing opportunity as we rapidly progress our final engineering and permitting efforts at Santa Cruz towards initial construction in 2026.”

Ivanhoe Electric is also pursuing support from the EXIM Bank’s Supply Chain Resilience Initiative and the Section 45X advanced manufacturing production tax credit, aimed at further reinforcing US critical mineral production.

The Santa Cruz copper project, led by Fluor, remains on track to complete its preliminary feasibility study in June 2025. The company is continuing to progress permitting and detailed engineering efforts, with initial construction activities anticipated in the first half of 2026.

Formerly headquartered in Canada, Ivanhoe Electric is a US-based company leveraging advanced geophysical surveying and data analytics technologies to accelerate the discovery of critical metals. Its exploration efforts focus on copper and other key minerals across projects primarily located in the United States, including the Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona and the Tintic copper-gold project in Utah. The company also operates a joint venture with Ma’aden in Saudi Arabia and has formed an exploration alliance with BHP to identify new deposits in the Southwestern USA.