Mitsubishi Buys Stake in Anglo’s Peru Mine to Build on Chile Tie

Mitsubishi Buys Stake in Anglo’s Peru Mine to Build on Chile Tie

Mitsubishi Corp., Japan’s biggest
commodity supplier and trader, bought a stake in Anglo American
Plc’s copper unit in Peru, building on their partnership in
mining the metal through a Chile venture.
An 18.1 percent stake in Anglo American Quellaveco SA was
purchased from International Finance Corp., Tokyo-based
Mitsubishi said today in a statement. Mitsubishi paid as much as
70 billion yen ($886 million) for the asset, the Nikkei reported
today, without saying where it got the information.
Mitsubishi, which gets 49 percent of its profit from metals,
will more than double its attributable copper output after doing
deals with Anglo American in Peru and Chile as the price of the
commodity used in wires gains. The transaction is the second
time the company has allied with Anglo American in the past four
months.
The Japanese trading company paid the world’s top platinum
and diamonds supplier about $5.39 billion for 24.5 percent of
copper producing Anglo American Sur SA. Codelco, Chile’s state-
owned copper company, filed a lawsuit last month to annul the
Sur sale to Mitsubishi, saying the move is aimed at thwarting
its bid to exercise a right to buy a 49 percent stake in the
copper asset.
The Quellaveco mine will add 40,000 metric tons of copper
to Mitsubishi’s attributable output from 2016 when it starts
production, the company said. Mitsubishi is targeting a 76
percent increase in copper output this year from 2011’s 140,000
tons, it said on Feb. 1.
The Quellaveco asset has 10 million metric tons of reserves
with an initial mine life of 28 years producing 225,000 tons a
year, Mitsubishi said. The Japanese company made the decision to
buy based on a “competitive divestment process” the IFC
started in late 2010 to early 2011, the company said.
Copper, up 10 percent in London since Jan. 1, is the
fifth-best performing commodity this year.