After nearly a year of negotiation, the acquisition of the British Monterrico Company by Zijin Minging Group together with Tongling Non-Ferrous Metals (Group) Inc. (China) and Xiamen Construction and Development Inc. achieved major breakthrough a few days ago. The Xiamen Zijin Tongguan Investment and Development Co., Ltd., jointly established by the above three parties, reached an agreement with the board of directors of the British Monterrico on the overall offer for acquisition. The board accepted the 3.5 pound per share offer by Zijin Tongguan, and agreed to recommend the tender offer to its shareholders. On February 5, Zijin Tongguan published to the market the announcement for overall offer for acquisition. Based on the agreement reached with the board of directors of Monterrico, the said acquisition will not exceed 70% stock right of the company’s shareholding equity (but not less than 50％). Monterrico will maintain its listing status after being acquired.
Monterrico is an elementary prospecting company based in London and listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM, commonly called Start-up Block) of London Stock Exchange. The closing price of the company’s share on February 2 was 2.975 pounds per share. Its market capitalization was approximately 78.5 million pounds, equivalent to around RMB1.2 billion yuan. There was nearly 18% premium in the takeover bid. The prime asset owned by Monterrico is the Rio Blanco super-large copper-molybdenum deposit north of Peru.
According to SRK appraisal, the ore body of Rio Blanco copper-molybdenum mine was determined by 0.4% copper as the cut-off grade, its ore reserve being calculated at 1.257 billion tons, the copper reserve at 7.16 million tons with an average grade of 0.57%, and the associated molybdenum content at 0.28 million tons with an average grade of 0.0228%. Of which the determined and estimated ore reserve is 0.816 billion tons, and the copper reserve is 4.81 million tons with the grade at 0.59％; the presumed ore reserve is 0.441 billion tons, and the copper reserve is 2.29 million tons with the grade at 0.52%.
Monterrico has entrusted Hatch Company to conduct detailed feasibility study for the Rio Blanco copper-molybdenum mine. In the initial phase, planning and design will be conducted for the 0.5 billion tons of ore in the open-pit mining area. The scale of the project construction is 25 million tons of ore treated annually. The copper content of the copper concentrate produced yearly will be 200,000 tons after it is built up and a space for future expansion to annual mining and dressing scale of 50 million tons of ore has been reserved.