Intercontinental London Park Lane Hotel
5 June 2012

President Benigno S. Aquino III attended his first business meeting with the executives of Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corporation (PASAR) and Glencore International on the second day of his Official Visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Glencore is a majority owner of PASAR which operates the only copper smelter and refinery in the Philippines.  For 25 years, it has been producing electrolytic copper cathode for export that was registered with the London Metal Exchange (LME) as Grade A Copper in 1984.  The PASAR plant complex occupies 80 hectares inside the Leyte Industrial Development Estate.

The smelter processes 720,000 tons of copper concentrate a year, or 60,000 tons a month, and the refinery has an annual capacity of 215,000 tons of cathodes.

In the meeting, PASAR and Glencore executives informed the President of their plan to invest $500-600 million to expand smelting capacity and build a power plant to support their operations.

Glencore International is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland and is a leading producer and marketer of commodities, with worldwide activities in the marketing of metals and minerals, energy products and agricultural products, as well as the production, refinement, processing, storage and transport of these products.

It employs about 3,000 people in its global marketing operations in some 50 offices in over 40 countries.  In its industrial operations, Glencore employs over 58,000 people in 33 countries.

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