This fellow quoted in the article below obviously has an axe to grind. Teck has made piles of money from Highland Valley even though it's low grade. That's why they've kept it running for decades and keep seeking to extend its mine life.

On the other hand, Ivanhoe has discovered magnificent grades of copper. One little caveat: it's all sitting in Congo. Good luck with that. You can have 3% copper that you may never get out of the ground due to political instability and warlords.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Ivanhoe Mines founder and chairman, Robert M. Friedland, is feeling his oats amidst the share recovery.

In Toronto speaking at a Merrill Lynch Bank of America mining conference, Mr. Friedland reeled off the copper cutoff grades his company's Kamoa property is registering in DRC Congo: 3 percent cutoff for 224 million metric tons of ore, or 19 million pounds of contained copper (indicated resource); and 2 percent cutoff for 550 million tons, or 37 million pounds of copper (indicated).

As is his style, Friedland, a 63-year-old Singapore-based mine developer, was pointed in his remarks. He cited Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX: T.TCK.A, Stock Forum) (TCK: T.TCK.B, Stock Forum), which at $15 billion is 12 times the size of Ivanhoe's stock-market worth. Teck is developing a Highland Valley copper (and molybdenum) property in British Columbia, Canada.

"My dear friend Don Lindsay is at Highland Valley mining air," Mr. Friedland said, pointing toward three or four Teck executives in the audience. "

His head grade is down to point 0.3 and our cut off grade in the Congo is 2 percent. We throw it away if it's not 2 percent."

Mr. Lindsay, Teck's chief executive, was not in the Sheraton Centre ballroom during the Ivanhoe chairman's keynote address. The Teck executives at one table looked grim.

In fairness, Kamoa, which looks like the world's largest high-grade copper find, is years away from production.

Plus, Ivanplats CEO Lars-Eric Johansson, age 66, and VP of Exploration David Broughton (photo attached -- Thom Calandra credit at Platreef) are sure to cringe when they hear their chairman use the words 'throw away.'

This is because in Kamoa's 43-101 published mineral resource, 43 million pounds of copper are categorized as indicated with a cutoff of 1 percent.

Still, overall copper grade for those 43 million pounds is almost 2.7 percent -- freakishly potent for any primary copper ground on our world.

http://www.stockhouse.com/Opinion/Independent-Reports/2013/09/19/Robert-Friedland-takes-swipe-at-Teck-%28T-TCK-B%29-exe