Shanghai Stock Exchange-listed China Nerin Engineering will wait for BHP’s final investment decision on a major expansion of its South Australia copper refining and smelting operations to start the supply component of a new A$200 million (US$138.5 million) engineering design and supply contract.
BHP is weighing expansion of SA copper output from circa-316,000 tonnes per annum to about 500,000tpa by the mid-2030s and could make a final decision next year.
China Nerin, which has a current market capitalisation of about US$1.19 billion, says it has delivered engineering and technical projects for clients in more than 70 countries, including a combined 10Mtpa of cathode copper capacity. It says it has built “seven large modern smelters in recent years”.
The BHP brief covers “critical processing facilities” at Olympic Dam in SA.
The Australian major has projects worth more than A$2 billion underway in the state, where it has copper mines at Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill and Carrapateena.
