China plans to expand overseas iron-ore mine buys

China is planning expand its overseas iron ore assets, aiming in five years to derive nearly half of its iron ore imports from Chinese-invested overseas mines, a senior official with the China Iron & Steel Association said Wednesday。

With its target, the association, which leads an influential lobby for a domestic industry that produces half the world's steel, aims to wrest a sizeable chunk of China's $80 billion iron ore import market back from a handful of global miners.

With the planned expansion of overseas investments, China would seek to derive 40% of ore imports from its own offshore mining assets by 2015, CISA vice chairman Luo Bingsheng said at an industry conference.

In the last two years, major state-owned steel makers and metal trading houses have concluded deals to buy iron ore assets overseas, including prospects in South America, Africa and Australia.

Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. （ACH）, one of the country's leading state-owned overseas investment vehicles, in July signed a deal with Rio Tinto to develop the Simandou iron ore mining project in the West African country of Guinea, said to be among the largest of such deposits in the world.