[Ferro-Alloys.com] Freeport-McMoRan Inc., often called Freeport, a mining company based in the Freeport-McMoRan Center in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, announced the sale of its African copper mine to China Molybdenum (CMOC) for a value of US$2.65 billion. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s state-owned Gecamines has also submitted its own bid for Freeport’s 56% stake in the high-grade Tenke Fungurume mine. Gecamines already owns 20% of the operation while Toronto-based Lundin Mining controls 24% which includes a first right of refusal to pick up Freeport’s stake. Freeport is also in talks with CMOC to sell its stakes in Freeport Cobalt and the Kokkola Cobalt Refinery in Finland for US$100 million. The Kisanfu Exploration project in the DRC is also up for sale for US$50 million. The Tenke mine had a sales of 467 million pounds (215,000 tonnes) of copper and 35 million pounds (16,000 tonnes) of cobalt in 2015 at a cash cost of $1.21 per pound of copper.

 Since the start of 2016 Freeport has announced over $4 billion in asset sale transactions with the objective of reducing debt while retaining a large portfolio of high quality assets and resources and a leading position in the global copper industry. In recent times, Freeport was struggling to manage its debt of more than US$20 billion. This was due to bad acquisitions of oil and gas assets three years ago. Earlier in the year, the American company had sold 13% stake in its US Morenci mine, which is the world’s fifth largest, for an amount of US$1 billion to Japan’s Sumitomo. Freeport has not been able to divest the energy operations although it was put on the block a year ago. In March CMOC had acquired assets from the Brazilian mines of Anglo American which is being restructured and has its assets up for sale. CMOC had paid US$1.5 billion in cash for the niobium and phosphates operations in Brazil.

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• [Editor:Jiang Li Juan ]