HONG KONG - A State-owned miner will invest 3 billion yuan ($454 million) in Daye Nonferrous Metals, China's fifth-largest copper producer by capacity, for an unspecified stake, a Daye executive said on Monday.

The investment could help Hubei province-owned Daye's plan to boost capacity by 70 percent to 600,000 tons of copper a year by 2015 using the cash injection from China Nonferrous Metal Mining, said the executive, who declined to be named.

"The investment should be 3 billion yuan. But we are sure that China Nonferrous won't take a majority stake," the executive told Reuters.

A public affairs official at Daye said the two parties would start discussing investment details after the Spring Festival holiday.

Daye has been the target of other Chinese companies in the past few years. It has 200,000 tons of annual smelting capacity and 350,000 tons of refining capacity in China currently, and buys the bulk of its raw materials from the local and overseas suppliers.

China Nonferrous owns copper, nickel, zinc, gold and bauxite mines domestically and in other countries, including Zambia, Australia and Kyrgyzstan, but its capacity to smelt and refine the ores into metal is less than its mining operation.

Reuters

(China Daily 02/01/2011 page16)