OREANDA-NEWS. Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and ITOCHU Corporation are pleased to announce that they have agreed to acquire interests in BHP Iron Ore (Jimblebar) Pty. Ltd. which is developing the Jimblebar Iron Ore mine (hereinafter "Jimblebar") in Western Australia, part of the Iron Ore business of leading mining company, BHP Billiton (Australia & UK). Binding documents have been executed this morning.

Mitsui and ITOCHU will acquire 7% and 8% interests respectively in Jimblebar and BHP Billiton will hold 85%. The investment amounts are approximately US\\$0.7 billion (66.5 billion yen) for Mitsui and US\\$0.8 billion (76.0 billion yen) for ITOCHU. Mitsui and ITOCHU will also contribute future development costs for Jimblebar in proportion to their shares.

Jimblebar is a large prospective deposit located 41km east of Newman in the Pilbara region. The mine is now under construction and will be a large scale, low cost, open pit mining operation with an initial production capacity of 35 million tons per annum, and with embedded options for expansion to 55 million tons per annum for incremental capital investment.

Mitsui and ITOCHU, together with BHP Billiton, have a long term relationship in three iron ore joint ventures, Mt. Newman, Yandi, and Mt. Goldsworthy in Western Australia (BHP Billiton holds an 85% share, Mitsui 7%, ITOCHU 8%), and Jimblebar ore will be transported through the rail and port facilities owned by these joint ventures. The three joint ventures shipped a total quantity of approximately 180 million tons in financial year 2012, and are currently expanding infrastructure capacity to 220 million tons per annum (including to service Jimblebar).

Through this transaction, Mitsui and ITOCHU seek to increase iron ore supply capacity through the Western Australia Iron Ore operations, in response to the expected increase in the medium to long term worldwide iron ore demand.