Nyrstar Eyes Acquisition by End July -Paper

BRUSSELS June 4 -- Nyrstar (NYR.BR: Quote), the world's biggest producer of zinc, is confident it will be able to announce another mining acquisition at the end of July, its chief executive told Belgian financial daily De Tijd.

The company's drive to expand into mining has so far resulted in Nyrstar acquiring mines or buying stakes in them in the United States, Greenland and Peru.

It has also reached an agreement to buy zinc concentrate from Finnish group Talvivaara (TALV.L: Quote) in a multi-year deal.

"I hope to be able to announce a deal when we publish our results for the first half of the year," Roland Junck told De Tijd on Friday.

He said his favourite region was south America and referred to potential opportunities in Chile, Peru and Bolivia.

"But I would also like to have 100 percent of the Coricancha mine in Peru," Junck said. Currently the group has an 85 percent stake in the mine.

Junck said the group would not pay more than "a few hundred million dollars" for an acquisition.

"Anglo American's (AAL.L: Quote) zinc mines ... were recently sold to India's Vedanta (VED.L: Quote) for 1.3 billion dollars. Deals like that are too big for us ... we offered 650 million euros ($800 million) for those activities," Junck said. ($1=.8131 euros)