Under the background of the increasingly fierce competition for global copper resources, domestic copper giants Zijin Mining, Luoyang Molybdenum Industry, Minmetals resources have increased overseas copper resources, and Jiangxi Copper Industry, another domestic copper giant, has also begun to be unwilling to be lonely. Recently, Jiangxi Copper announced that it will purchase 157 million shares (about 5.24% of its issued shares) of Australian exploration company SolGold Plc through its wholly-owned subsidiary Jiangxi Copper (Hong Kong) Investment Co., LTD., with a transaction consideration of $18,071,200, about 130 million yuan.
Together with the equity already held before, after the completion of this transaction, Jiangxi Copper's total shareholding ratio rose to 12.19%, and it will become the largest single shareholder of Sol Gold. Headquartered in Perth, Australia, Sol Gold is a mineral exploration and development company. Its core asset is 100% interest in the Cascabel project in Ecuador, located in the undeveloped northern part of the mineral-rich Andean copper belt, where the main ore body, Alpala, currently has proven, controlled and inferred resources: With 12.2 million tons of copper, 30.5 million ounces of gold and 102.3 million ounces of silver, it is one of the world's largest copper-gold discoveries in recent years. According to a pre-feasibility study released by Sol Gold in 2022, the Cascabel project is expected to produce 132,000 tons of copper, 358,000 ounces of gold and 1 million ounces of silver annually during its 55-year mining life, which is expected to rank among the top 20 copper-gold mines in South America.
