China's outbound investment cooperation made steady progress from January to July, and the structure of outbound investment continued to improve, said the head of the department of outbound investment and economic cooperation of the ministry of commerce. It is worth noting that mining industry, one of the major areas of outbound investment in China, accounts for 8.1%. What level is that?

According to the data of the national bureau of statistics, since 2002, mining industry has taken up a double-digit proportion in China's activities, and its proportion has decreased significantly in the past two years. However, it is still the main flow field, which shows that its importance has not decreased, nor can it be reduced. Although China's economy has entered a stage of high-quality development, there is still a huge demand for mineral products for a long period of time. Therefore, based on the domestic basis, domestic enterprises should seize the opportunity to continue to adhere to and increase the "go out" of the mining industry to ensure the safety of China's mineral resources.

As we all know, the global mining industry experienced a "golden decade" at the beginning of this century, followed by the global economic slowdown in 2012 and entered a period of deep adjustment. Since 2016, emerging economies represented by China have witnessed rapid infrastructure development and high demand for energy, metals and other commodities, leading to a positive trend in the mineral market. Data show that the prices of bulk metal products have rebounded between 2016 and 2018. There are signs that the global mining industry is recovering.

Speaking at the China international mining conference 2018, Trevor Hart, global head of mining at KPMG, said the industry has been optimising assets and reducing liabilities for more than a decade. "It's a good and reasonable logic, but it leads to the need for investment in mining now to achieve future growth," he said. The mining industry needs to replace or increase inventories and develop new assets."

Ernst & young's global capital confidence barometer (CCB) index shows that mining mergers and acquisitions will see a big increase in 2019. Seventy-four percent of executives of mining and metals companies surveyed see an increase in mergers and acquisitions in 2019, up from 53 percent in the previous survey. Fifty-two per cent of executives thought the m&a chain would expand, up from 34 per cent a year earlier. Sixty per cent thought the number of completed deals would increase, double the 34 per cent recorded in the same period last year. Twenty-seven percent believe that cross-industry mergers and acquisitions will increase, driven by the technology and information industries.* a recent ranking of the world's 50 largest mining companies by MINING.com and its sister company IntelligenceMine also suggests that mining is recovering.

Recently, gold, cobalt and other precious metals represented by the price began a strong rebound or even reverse. Prior to this, some listed companies in China have already gone ahead to acquire minerals, bucking the trend when commodity prices fall below mining costs.

In 2018, Zijin mining made two huge merger announcements in three days, acquiring Serbia's big copper mine and Canada's Nevsun corporation for 2.65 billion us dollars, or about 18.222 billion yuan.

Nevsun is a mineral resources exploration and development company mainly engaged in copper, zinc and gold. It owns 60% interest in the Bisha copper and zinc mine in Eritrea, Africa, and two flagship projects of Timok copper and gold project in Serbia, with a total of 27 exploration rights in Serbia, eritrea and Macedonia.

In addition, Pengxin resources started to mine the bottom of the gold mine earlier and successfully acquired aoni gold mine under the major shareholder in 2018. According to the disclosure, oni gold mine reserves 71.31 million tons of ore and 501.74 tons of gold metal, with an average grade of 7.04 g/ton. If the amount of all gold metal at one gold is converted into RMB at the new gold price of *, the value of its metal reserves is as high as 174 billion yuan, about 35 billion yuan more than when the company bought it.

Similar still has sheng tun mining industry. The company has obtained nickel, copper, cobalt and other precious metal resources in recent three years, and its metal resources reserves have increased significantly. According to incomplete statistics, the company has invested nearly 2.2 billion yuan in mining in 2016. The company has also invested in metal smelting projects in mineral-rich areas at home and abroad. In February, the company invested 546 million yuan to acquire a copper and cobalt mine in Congo, adding 302,000 tons of copper reserves and 42,700 tons of cobalt reserves. In August, the company invested another 1 billion yuan in a nickel mine project.

Nickel prices recently hit their highest level since April 2018, spurred by news of the shutdown of the big nickel mine in the Philippines.

Resources are king. Overseas mergers and acquisitions of high-quality resources are the basis for the development of mining enterprises, and also have far-reaching significance for national resource security. (From Alu News)