Zijin Mining Group Co, China's largest gold producer and third-largest copper producer, announced Tuesday that it would pay A$545 million ($500 million) to take over Indophil, an Australian gold and copper company.
The Fujian-based Zijin Mining would make a conditional cash off-market takeover bid for all of the issued shares in Indophil for A$1.28 per share, according to a statement on the company website.
Indophil Resources NL, with its registered office in Victoria, Australia, owns 34 percent operating interest in Sagittarius Mines, Inc, a Philippine mineral exploration and development company which controls the world-class Tampakan Copper-Gold Project in the Southern Philippines.
The Tampakan Project's mineral resource is the largest undeveloped copper-gold deposit in southeast Asia. The latest confirmed mineral resource estimate is 2.4 billion tons containing 13.5 million tons of copper and 15.8 million ounces of gold at a 0.3 percent copper cut-off grade, the company said in the statement.
The deal, reached on Sunday, is still waiting for regulatory approval from both the Chinese and Australian governments, the company said.