Xstrata secures £2.6bn refinancing
ANGLO-SWISS mining company Xstrata secured a £2.55bn multi-currency debt refinancing package that it intends to use to fund its expansion into new mines, it announced yesterday.
The credit facility is equally split into a three- and five-year tranches and will be used to replace Xstrata’s existing £3.5bn debt, due to mature in October 2011.
The facility, which launched at £1.9bn, was significantly oversubscribed and subsequently increased to £2.55bn.
Xstrata recently gave the green light to a huge investment in a brownfield expansion to the Tintaya copper mine in southern Peru that is budgeted to cost £0.9bn.
In August it approved spending £2.68bn to develop its major, low-cost, long-life Las Bambas copper project in southern Peru’s Apurimac Region. It also approved £0.7bn funding to develop the Ulan West underground thermal coal mine in the central west of New South Wales, Australia.