BHP to sell Chilean copper mine to private equity fund EMR Capital - sources

LONDON (Reuters) - BHP <BHP.AX> <BLT.L> has agreed to sell Cerro Colorado copper mine to private equity fund EMR Capital, two sources said on Tuesday.

The world's biggest listed miner had hired Citi early in 2017 to sell the asset, which was then valued at around $800 million (607.1 million pounds), although one of the sources said the agreed sale price was much lower. The sources declined to be named.

Cerro Colorado is located in the Tarapacá region, the extreme north of Chile's copper belt, and yielded 77,000 tonnes of copper in fiscal 2016. BHP's flagship mine Escondida, which also is in Chile, yields more than 10 times that amount annually.

(Reporting by Clara Denina, Dasha Afanasieva, Barbara Lewis)