CHARTS: The coming critical minerals trade war is BRICS short of a load
"While a large number of countries around the world continue to talk about securing raw material supply, China is actually doing something about it."
Chinova Resources, a unit of Shanxi Donghui Energy Group, has put its Australian copper-gold operations up for sale and hopes to have the deal done this year, a director at adviser BurnVoir Corporate Finance, which is handling the sale, said on Tuesday.
The operations in Queensland state include the Osborne copper gold processing plant, Mount Elliot mine, infrastructure including an airport, roads and a power plant and a number of development sites. The mine is near the town of Cloncurry, 660 kilometres (410 miles) west of the port of Townsville.
“The Chinova package has had good interest from large, established, international miners as well as ASX-listed junior to mid-cap mining companies looking for a relatively large acquisition to propel them onto the radar of institutional investors,” Executive Director Theo Tsihlis Executive said.
Some multinational private equity groups have also shown interest, he added.
“We would be expecting that it (an offer) would be north of A$300 million,” he told Reuters. “We would like to conclude it this year.”
Shanxi Donghui Energy Group bought the mine from Ivanhoe Australia in 2013.
Forecast production for 2024 is 7,900 metric tonnes of copper and 39,400 ounces of gold. A sales agreement for supply from Osborne is in place with commodity trader Hartree Partners.
Development projects include the Mt Dore copper heap leach project, which has an 11 year mine life and the Merlin molybdenum rhenium copper project.
Its mineral resources estimates include 3.9 million tonnes of contained copper, 6.8 million ounces of contained gold, 96,000 tonnes of molybdenum and 12,000 tonnes of cobalt.
($1 = 1.5533 Australian dollars)
(By Melanie Burton; Editing by Michael Perry)
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