New Copper Mine Resources Up 38.5 Million Mt

SHANGHAI, Oct. 26 (SMM) –Based on the Report on the State of Land Resources 2010 recently released by the Ministry of Land and Resources, China found a cumulative of 370 nonferrous metal resource bases including copper, lead and zinc as the end of 2010, 250 bases for gold and silver. New copper mine resources increased 38.5 million mt, compared with a 449 million mt increase in aluminum bauxite.

Based on the statistics of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), China's reserves on copper mine resources were about 30 million mt in 2010, ranking the sixth in the world, and with a large portion of copper mines unqualified for economic value of mineral exploration.

Besides, from geographical distribution, 10 big new resource bases are located in West and Northwest China, where have higher elevation, inconvenient transportation and without electric power equipments, so it's difficult to form scale production there. However, out of pursuit for the control of nonferrous metal resources, industry insiders have been fighting for the ownership of domestic mines over the past fewer years.