China Railway invests $1.72 bil in Ecuador copper mine

摘要

China Railway Construction Corp. said nWednesday its Ecuador mining arm nEcuacorrientes has signed an agreement with nEcuador’s government to invest $1.72 billion nto develop the Mirador copper project. Under nthe agreement, which took a year to negotiate, nMirador will have an ore processing capacity of n30,000 mt/day by 2014, rising to 60,000 mtday by the end of 2016, when it will produce nabout 354,000 mt/year of copper concentrate, nChina Railway said to the Shanghai Stock nExchange. Mirador has a total resource of 660 nmillion mt of ore at a grading of 0.53% copper, n0.17 g/mt gold and 1.41 g/mt silver, containing nabout 3.49 million mt of copper metal, 112 mt nof gold and 927 mt of silver, according to the nstatement. The deal is still pending the approval nof the Chinese government. Ecuacorrientes is nowned by Vancouver-based Corriente Resources, na 50:50 joint venture between China Railway nand Shenzhen-listed Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings, China’s second-biggest ncopper producer. Anhui-based Tongling nproduced 813,600 mt of copper cathode nin 2010 and targeted producing 870,000 nmt in 2011, with final production figures nfor the year yet to be released.