On the evening of October 12, Zijin Mining announced thatit will acquire 30% equity of Shandong Ruibin Mining through an agreement transfer, investing 3.9845 billion yuan, becoming the second largest shareholder of the largest single gold mine in China - the Laizhou offshore gold mine in Shandong.

The offshore gold mine is the largest single gold mine discovered globally in the past 20 years and is a rare world-class high-grade undeveloped gold mine in China.According to the JORC international standard, the offshore gold mine has a gold resource of 562.37 tons, with an average grade of 4.20 grams/ton, including a reserve of 212.21 tons with an average grade of 4.42 grams/ton.

The offshore gold mine is 100% owned by Shandong Ruibin. After the transaction is completed, Zijin Mining will hold a 30% interest in the mine, and the company's newly added gold resource will be 168.7 tons, bringing the total gold resource to over 2600 tons; according to the design plan, the mine is scheduled to be completed in 2025, and after full production,the annual gold production is expected to be about 15-20 tons, with a service life of 23 years, making it the largest gold mine in China, corresponding to an additional gold output of 4.5-6 tons for Zijin Mining.

The offshore gold mine is the first offshore gold mine discovered in China, located in the globally renowned gold mining rich area and the most important gold industry base in China - the Bohai Bay Jiaodong region's first-level mineralization belt, the Sanshandao-Cangshang fault mineralization belt, with excellent geological conditions for mineralization. The region has confirmed a number of super-large and large gold mines such as Sanshandao and Cangshang. The offshore gold mine has a thick ore body, and in just a few years since its discovery, the gold resource has increased by about 100 tons. Currently, the deep part of the ore body within the exploration range is still not closed off, and the potential for exploration and resource increase is very significant, earning it the nickname "the underwater 2000-meter gold kingdom."

The offshore gold mine is designed for underground mining, with a mining scale of 12,000 tons/day. The ore endowment is good, the mining cost is low, and the recovery rate of ore dressing can reach 97%; mining licenses, project approvals, environmental assessments, energy-saving approvals, and safety facility design reviews have been obtained, and the licenses are basically complete; according to the preliminary design plan in 2021, the total investment for the project is about 6 billion yuan, and about 1.4 billion yuan has been invested so far. According to geological reports and years of mining experience from the neighboring Sanshandao gold mine, the overall stability of the offshore gold mine rock mass is relatively good, and a certain thickness of seabed muddy sediment plays a role in water isolation and stability of the ore body roof, providing favorable conditions for project mining.

Gold resources are a ballast for financial security, holding significant strategic and risk-hedging importance. According to S&P data, in the past decade, the difficulty of global gold resource exploration has continued to increase, with new discoveries of resources, especially shallow resources, sharply declining, and deep resources have become one of the main sustainable resource pathways for major global gold companies. Zijin Mining's entry into the deep offshore gold mine is of great significance for the company to enhance its domestic gold resource holdings, achieve the goal of producing 80-90 tons of gold by 2025, expand a new mining development model, and build a new competitive advantage in the global gold mining industry.

At the same time, the controlling shareholder of Ruibin Mining is the large domestic gold enterprise Zhaojin Mining, which has rich experience in gold mine operations, especially in deep-sea mining. They recognize and support Zijin Mining in implementing this share acquisition, and both parties will fully leverage their respective advantages in subsequent development, construction, and production operations to achieve effective synergy, striving to build the offshore gold mine into the largest, deepest, and most efficient modern gold mine in China.