xstrata doesn't need copper

DJ Xstrata Copper Growth Unreliant On Acquisitions

LONDON (Dow Jones)--Xstrata PLC's (XTA.LN) copper growth doesn't rely on acquisitions but can now be organically driven following the company's purchase of MIM Holdings, Chief Executive Mick Davis said Wednesday.
"The expansion of growth options across our portfolio has clearly left Xstrata free from the imperative to deliver growth by acquisition alone," he said in a statement accompanying the company's first half of 2005 results.
"Now that the management team in Xstrata Copper has well established programs in place to maximize the value of its existing assets and mine platforms, they have turned their attention to realizing additional value and optionality by growing its copper business," he added.
Davis identified three relatively early stage initiatives since the MIM acquisition that he believes to hold "much promise." These were Las Bambas in Southern Peru, the Tampakan copper gold deposit in the Philippines and the Roseby copper project and sulphide prospect in northern Queensland.
The acquisition of MIM Holdings in June 2003 gave Xstrata a 50% controlling interest in the operating company of the Alumbrera open pit copper-gold mine in Argentina, where a concentrator expansion was announced earlier Wednesday.
The deal also gave Xstrata its North Queensland Division comprising the Mount Isa Mines Ltd. underground copper mining and processing operations, the Ernest Henry open pit copper-gold mine, the Townsville copper refinery and port operations and Bowen Coke.