Zijin Mining Group Co., China's largest gold producer and third-largest copper producer, announced Tuesday that it would pay 545 million Australian dollars (500 million U.S. dollars) to take over Indophil, an Australian gold and copper company.

The Fujian-based Zijin Mining would make a conditional cash off-market takeover bid for all of the issued shares in Indophil for 1.28 Australian dollars per share, according to a statement on the company website.

Indophil Resources NL, with its registered office in Victoria, Australia, owns 34 percent operating interest in Sagittarius Mines, Inc., a Philippine mineral exploration and development company which controls the world-class Tampakan Copper-Gold Project in the Southern Philippines.

The Tampakan Project's mineral resource is the largest undeveloped copper-gold deposit in southeast Asia. The latest confirmed mineral resource estimate is 2.4 billion tonnes containing 13.5 million tonnes of copper and 15.8 million ounces of gold at a 0.3 percent copper cut-off grade, the company said in the statement.

The deal, reached on Sunday, is still waiting for regulatory approval from both the Chinese and Australian governments, the company said.

Zijin Mining surged 6 percent to 10.6 yuan (1.56 U.S. dollars) as of 11 a.m. Tuesday.

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