SEOUL, March 31 | Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:40am EDT
SEOUL, March 31 (Reuters) - State-run Korea Resources Corp (KORES) said on Thursday it was seeking to list its Canadian, South African and Australian units to fund resources acquisitions overseas.
KORES is leading South Korea's drive to boost self-sufficiency of key mineral resources such as iron ore, coking coal, copper, and rare metals to feed its manufacturing-based economy, ranked Asia's fourth-largest.
"We are very much interested in expanding into the southern hemisphere around the three major pillars of South America for copper, Australia for coal and Africa for rare metals," KORES president Kim Shin-jong said in a statement.
Kim said it was aiming to secure 200,000 tonnes of copper output annually from mines in six South American countries and to list the assets on the Toronto stock market within five years.
KORES is also developing 11 coal projects and aims to list them in Sydney, while it wants to take its around six African projects, including ventures for rare metals such as cobalt and chrome, public in Johannesburg.
Kim made the comments in Madagascar where its Ambatovy nickel project is due to start test production later this year with a target of raising annual output to 60,000 tonnes from 2013.
A KORES-led Korean consortium owns a 27.5 percent stake in the project and South Korea plans to bring 30,000 tonnes of the metal home annually through a 15-year contract, meeting a quarter of its annual nickel consumption.
KORES estimated the project will boost the country's self-sufficiency of the metal to 61.8 percent in 2013 from 36.8 percent in 2010.
Toronto-based diversified miner Sherritt International is developing the $5.3 billion project in partnership with KORES, Japan's Sumitomo Corp and SNC-Lavalin Group Inc .
KORES estimated that the project will generate $1.8 billion of revenue annually, or $1 billion in pre-tax distributable earnings.
The Korean consortium is likely to recoup its $900 million investment in four years, Kim said.
KORES has investments in 30 resource exploration, development and production projects in 12 countries. It is also bidding for mining rights in Mongolia's Tavan Tolgoi project, which is viewed as one of the world's largest untapped coking coal reserves. (Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)
