LONDON – BHP has agreed to sell Cerro Colorado copper mine to private equity fund EMR Capital, two sources close to the deal said on Tuesday.
The world's biggest listed miner had hired Citi early in 2017 to sell the asset, which was then valued at around $800-million, although one of the sources said the agreed sale price was in the "lower hundreds of millions". The sources declined to be named.
BHP and other major miners are keen on copper as a mineral expected to be in high demand for both the traditional economy and for electric vehicles, but its preference is for large-scale projects.
Cerro Colorado, is located in the Tarapacá region, the extreme north of Chile's copper belt, and yielded 77 000 t of copper in fiscal 2016. BHP's flagship mine Escondida, which also is in Chile, yields more than 10 times that amount annually.
The Cerro Colorado mine has government approval to operate until 2023 but that could be extended.
None of the parties involved had any immediate comment.