Resource News

Cape Lambert sells Lady Annie copper mine to Asian buyer

CAPE Lambert Resources has sold its Lady Annie copper mine in Queensland to an Asian buyer for about $35 million more than it would have raised in an abandoned public float of the mine, executive chairman Tony Sage said.

Mr Sage told Dow Jones Newswires the initial public offering would have generated about $108.5m for Cape Lambert, with the company planning to retain a 15 per cent stake in the listed entity.

“Under this deal we will sell the whole lot and will be getting in cash back immediately of about $35m more than we were under the old deal,” he said in an interview.

Another person familiar with the deal said the sale price is in the same ballpark as the $150m the company had previously publicly canvassed as a likely price.

The sale highlights the ongoing strength of interest from Asian buyers in Australian mining assets.

Mr Sage said confidentiality clauses prevented him from naming the buyer, but that it was a publicly listed company in a jurisdiction controlled by China and was able to pay up front for the mine as it had a billion dollars in cash.

The buyer is not a Chinese Government agency, he said, adding that the deal was finalized on the sidelines of the PDAC mining conference in Toronto.

The Perth-based miner pulled its planned float of the mine on the Australian exchange in February, citing adverse market conditions, and Mr Sage said at the time he had received approaches from Chinese and Indian buyers interested in the mine.

Lady Annie has been on care and maintenance since February 2009, but in offer documents for the planned float Cape Lambert had outlined plans to restart mining by July 2010.

Targeted production in 2010 was to have been 20,000 tonnes, rising to 25,000 tonnes in 2011 with exploration work planned to extend the mine’s life to a minimum of seven years.

The Lady Annie assets include open pit mines and a heap leach processing plant as well as thousands of square kilometers of exploration tenements in Queensland’s north.

Cape Lambert shares are on a trading halt ahead of the announcement of the details of the sale…read more at The Australian