Lady Annie Mine is located in the Gulf country north of Mt Isa (north-west Qld). The copper mine was owned by CopperCo, which went into receiverhsip. A few days ago the May 2009 sale was finalised, to Western Australian-based Cape Lambert Iron Ore.
The actual Lady Annie Copper Mine has not yet been on-sold by Cape Lambert – however they have already had several approaches from overseas buyers. It is actually nearby phosphate deposits, also referred to as ‘Lady Annie’, that were owned by Legend, who have entered into a joint venture with IFFCO.
In June 2009, the New Delhi bureau of The Hindu Business Line reported:
‘In order to ensure assured raw material supply at a discount over market prices, IFFCO has finalised plans to set up a joint venture company in Australia for mining rock phosphate and supply it to its facilities in India. The co-operative would set up the joint venture with Legend International Holdings Inc of Australia. It would mine rock phosphate at Lady Annie project (sic) in Queensland and would supply three million tonnes of rock phosphate to IFFCO annually. The price at which the subsidiary would sell rock phosphate to IFFCO would be negotiated on a fair and equitable basis for both companies based on international market prices applicable for the Indian market with an appropriate discount.’
According to The Economic Times (India), IFFCO has agreed to buy and distribute 80% of Legend’s output, for distribution through IFFCO’s network.
It appears this is the IFFCO that is the Indian Farmer’s Co-operative; not the Dubai-based IFFCO that bought into the AACo this year. It is confusing because both companies are owned by Indians (maybe not so co-incidental). In any case, both purchases of shares in Australian companies are of concern.
China has a population of approximately 1.3 billion; but India, with a much smaller landmass (approximately 2.4% of the planet’s land area), has a population relatively not far below that – approximately 1.1 billion. With no government-run birth control measures apparent, India’s population will presumably surpass China’s population in the not-too-distant future, and keeping up with food production will be of increasing concern. There a now more than 100,000 millionaires in India but there’s plenty of people at the other end of the scale.
This piece of news, regarding another purchase of Australia’s natural resources by a customer country, was apparently only prominently reported in newspapers based in India rather than Australia, where it seemed to only make news in specific mining publications. It leaves us with a raft of concerns. For starters, squeezing the maximum discount out of the supplier is good for the buying country but is eminently bad for the selling country. Legend must have been desperate for cash. It’s not rocket science to guess that ‘an appropriate discount’ means ‘bottom dollar’, from the purchaser’s point of view. It seems evident that in regard to Legend’s phosphate output, Australia will miss out on the proceeds of the increasing international price of fertiliser. And I wonder how long it is until Australia, with relatively infertile soil, runs out of phosphate, and has to import it – at a price that is a multiple of what the going rate per tonne is today. And I wonder what has been done about the 2009 wet season Lady Annie Mine water contamination; and what will be done to ensure there is no repeat performance of environmental damage in future? And when are Australians going to wake up and realise that we must do whatever we can to minimise these sales of natural resource companies – mines and food producers, and instead only sell the end products? For our future economic prosperity, and to safeguard the environment. It’s hard enough chasing an Australian mining company to repair environmental damage; chasing an overseas-owned company would be a complete waste of time.
Tags: Conservation and the environment, Rural foreign investment