Rio owns 65% in JV with ICT Group for geological exploration in Russia
MOSCOW. Feb 10 (Interfax) - Australian-British mining giant Rio Tinto owns a 65% stake in a joint venture with Russia's ICT Group on geological exploration in Russia, according to information obtained by Interfax from Dun & Bradstreet's database.
Rio represents London-based Rio Tinto Minerals Development Ltd in the joint venture (Cyprus-based company Rio Tinto ICT Ltd.). ICT Cyprus Ltd owns 35% of the joint venture.
The joint venture's directors are Sergei Areshev, head of ICT Group's international legal division, who represents the company on OJSC Polymetal's board of directors; and Arnaud Jean-Francois Christophe Brion.
ICT Group did not comment on its stake in the joint venture.
Rio Tinto ICT Ltd has charter capital of $2,000, divided into 130 ordinary class-A shares and 70 ordinary class-B shares of par value $10 each.
A source familiar with the deal previously said that the joint venture had acquired the owner of the license to a prospective deposit in Russia's Far East. The project is not related to Polymetal, it is a prospective geological structure in a remote area, the resources of which have yet to be proven, and Rio has been brought in as a world leader in exploration, he said.
According to Interfax's SPARK database, Rio Tinto ICT has acquired LLC Lazurnoye, a St. Petersburg gold and silver exploration and mining company. According to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service's website, Rio Tinto ICT has secured approval to buy another Russian company, LLC Olkhovoye.
There is a project called Lazurnoye in the Far East - a porphyry copper deposit in Primorye's Chuguyevsky District, 90 kilometers from the nearest train station. Although the ore field has been surveyed for nearly 70 years, only a prognosis evaluation of Lazurnoye's resources has been completed. It estimates P1 mineral resources at 155,000 tonnes of copper, 7.7 tonnes of gold and 2,500 tonnes of molybdenum, with total ore reserves estimated at 32.24 million tonnes.
Rio had already created a joint venture in Russia in the mining industry - in 2006, it established the service company RioNor Geological Exploration together with MMC Norilsk Nickel to prospect for non-ferrous metals and iron ore in Siberia and the Far East. Rio owned a 49% in the joint venture, which engaged in copper field exploration in the Far East. In 2010, Norilsk and Rio liquidated the project, deeming it more expedient to conduct work independently.
In addition to its stakes of 17.9% in Polymetal and 12.16% in Uralkali , ICT Group controls assets in the financial sector (ICT Group's owners are major shareholders of Nomos Bank), transport engineering, industrial engineering, and commercial and industrial real estate development. The group's assets total about $5 billion.