Equinox Minerals


Equinox Minerals is a mining and exploration company with corporate offices in Perth, Australia and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has operations in Peru and Australia. In Zambia it owned the Lumwana Mining Company, but that was bought by Barrick Gold in 2011.
Through Liontown Resources Limited and Alturas Minerals Corp., the company has gold and copper-gold exploration interests in Peru and Australia.
The Lumwana project which had enough reserves to be productive for 37 years, cost the company one billion dollars to develop.
In Zambia it has been credited with supporting social development through projects which aim to build schools, attract professionals to areas around its mine sites. 2010 copper production was 323.4 million pounds 68% higher than in 2009.
The company produced slightly more copper than it sells, 77% of production occurred during the first nine months of the year ; capital expenditure amounted to $66 million. In September 2010 company debt was $433 million, long term debt fell significantly in the last quarter of 2010 from $422 million down to $295.57 million. Even though Equinox doesn't produce gold Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold company acquired Equinox Minerals in April 2011; the deal will lower the fraction of revenue Barrick receives from the sale of gold to 80%.

History

The company formed after a merger between Equinox and Equinox Resources in January, 2004, and was incorporated the same month as a Canadian company. It began operations in Zambia in 1996.
Prior to being acquired by Equinox in 1999 at least 10 different companies failed in their attempts to develop the Lumwana project, which covers 2 major copper mines and 1355 km squared in area.
In 2010 Equinox was involved in a couple major transactions; first it acquired the Jabal Sayid copper-gold-silver project 350 km from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, capable of producing 2.6 million tons of ore per year starting in 2012. In February it launched a $4.8 billion hostile takeover bid for copper producer Lundin Mining, at the same time Lundin was attempting its own takeover.. In April 2011, Equinox rejected a takeover offer by China Minmetals, but later accepted a bid by Barrick Gold.
On April 25, 2011, Barrick Gold Corporation announced the acquisition of Equinox for $7.69 billion.

Exploration projects