(Yicai) March 12 -- Shandong Gold Mining, a unit of Chinese state-owned enterprise Shandong Gold Group, plans to buy a controlling stake in the operator of a gold mine in China’s northeastern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Shandong Gold will acquire a 70 percent stake in Baotou Changtai Mining for CNY471 million (USD66 million), the Jinan-based buyer announced yesterday.

Changtai Mining owns the mining and exploration rights of the Tolgoi Gold Mine in Inner Mongolia and a mineral beneficiation plant with an ore processing capacity of 200 tons per day. The Tolgoi Gold Mine has proven gold reserves of 16.1 tons and an expected gold output of about 400 kilograms for this year, Shandong Gold noted.

The acquisition will bring Shandong Gold over 16 tons of new proven gold resource holdings, which may grow to more than 20 tons as the exploration progresses this year, the firm added. The Tolgoi Gold Mine will also be Shandong Gold’s first gold mine in western Inner Mongolia.

This was the third gold mine acquisition that Shandong Gold and its controlled companies announced this year.

In late January, Shandong Gold said it would invest CNY10.3 billion (USD1.4 billion) to acquire the exploitation rights of China’s largest single gold mine, which has 444 tons of mineable gold. At the end of last month, Yintai Gold announced that the firm controlled by Shandong Gold was planning to acquire Osino Resources, a Canadian gold exploration company with gold resources in Namibia, for CAD368 million (USD273 million).

Shandong Gold [SHA: 600547] closed 3.1 percent down at CNY24.64 (USD3.43) in Shanghai today. The stock climbed nearly 20 percent since it announced its first gold mine acquisition of the year on Jan. 26.

Editor: Futura Costaglione