Reuters reported that Metallurgical Corporation of China a newly listed building and engineering firm as saying that its copper mining project in Afghanistan with Jiangxi Copper will start production by the end of 2011.

The 2 Chinese companies started construction of the USD 4.4 billion project in July and have raised the project's designed capacity to 320,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate a year from the previous planned 200,000 tonnes.

Mr Shen Heting president of MCC said that "The average cost of copper from the project is USD 2,800 per tonne. That estimated cost is less than half of the current world copper price MCU3.

Mr Shen said that the dual listed MCC expects the project to produce 180,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate per year in its Phase I by end 2011, expandable to 320,000 tonnes with completion of the Phase II. 2 years after the Phase I, the output would be expanded to 320,000 tonnes per year.

He said that MCC would provide copper concentrates from the Afghan project to its subsidiary Huludao Zinc 000751.SZ which is China's second largest zinc smelter by capacity and is expanding copper capacity. He added Huludao would complete upgrading at a 100,000 tonne per year smelter by the end of this year.

Mr Shen said that "Huludao's copper production would be 300,000 per tones to 400,000 tonnes per year in 4 years to 5 years."

(Sourced from Reuters)