Matt Chambers From: The Australian November 12, 2010 12:00AM
COPPER miner Aditya Birla Minerals is looking to make acquisitions worth $500 million as it tries to replicate its WA underground copper project. Managing director Sunil Kulwal said the company, which is 51 per cent-owned by India's Hidalco, wanted to increase production beyond the 80,000 tonnes a year expected from its two Australian mines.
"We're looking to invest further in good copper prospects, either greenfields in Australia or the rest of the world, or if there is a company that is in definitive feasibility stage," Mr Kulwal told reporters at the company's Nifty site, 1250km northeast of Perth.
Mr Kulwal said that if Aditya Birla bought an advanced project, it would be looking for something that could produce between 50,000 and 100,000 tonnes of copper a year and could be worth $200m to $300m.
Combined with greenfields projects worth up to $20m, Aditya Birla could spend up to $500m, he said.
A major shareholder willing to back the acquisitions -- Hidalco -- and a healthy balance sheet put the company in a good position, Mr Kulwal said. But he said that with the copper market running hot, reasonably priced acquisitions were hard to find.
Aditya Birla bought the Nifty open pit mine in 2005 from Straits Resources. It then developed the Nifty underground mine, which processes nickel sulphide ore, to produce about 55,000 tonnes a year of copper concentrate.
The Perth-based company also plans to restart the mothballed Mount Gordon copper mine near Mount Isa in the next few weeks. The high-cost mine was closed in January last year after copper prices plunged. But a big run-up in copper prices to near-record levels of $US4 a pound has allowed it to restart the mine. Company shares rose 5c to $1.38.
