By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Korea Resources Corp. (KORES), the state-owned minerals explorer, and its partners plan to invest $6 billion (roughly 5.98 trillion won) in mining and energy projects abroad, according to a news report.
KORES CEO Lee Han-ho said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that his company is targeting to attain uranium and copper from Africa and South America within eight years for the world’s 13th-largest economy.
He told the news media that his company plans to commit $1.8 billion, with the rest possibly coming from local companies and the National Pension Service.
South Korea, which imports 97 percent of its energy and minerals, has been struggling to gain more crude oil and other raw materials amid the recent international price hike. Raw materials represent 50 to 60 percent of the country's total imports.
``What we plan to do is not to simply ship metal concentrates out of the countries, but explore, develop, produce and then process the concentrates there,'' Lee said. ``Also we will build roads or power plants for the countries.''
He added the investments are planned to boost output of six commodities ― bituminous coal, uranium, iron ore, copper ore, zinc and nickel ― from South Korean-owned overseas ventures to 38 percent of import needs by 2016 from about half that figure now.
``South Korea was quite late,'' Lee told Bloomberg. ``But I'm confident we can meet the goal since the way we pursue those projects are competitive in that we offer the technology and capital that some resource-rich countries need.''
KORES expects to enter into talks this year with South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia on mining exploration. It has an initial agreement with a mining company in Zambia to develop a copper deposit and a deal in Zimbabwe to explore for chrome.
Lee said his company may gain four to five exploration projects in South American countries this year without elaborating, as it will also expand investments in Peru, Bolivia and Mexico, mainly for copper.
Currently, KORES operates 20 projects in eight countries, mostly in Australia, China and Canada. The biggest and most successful venture is the $3.7 billion Ambatovy nickel project in Madagascar, which will produce 60,000 metric tons of nickel a year as of 2010.