CHINA'S Minmetals Corp will revive a plan to develop a new open pit copper deposit at its Golden Grove zinc mine in Western Australia on signs that copper prices are increasing.

A feasibility study is being done on the open pit, which will produce about 240,000 tons of copper concentrate containing 59,000 tons of copper metal in concentrate from 2011 to 2014, Melbourne-based Minerals and Metals Group, the company's Australian subsidiary, said yesterday in a statement .

The MMG Board will review the study before giving its nod later this year.

MMG was formed by combining the majority of the zinc and copper mining assets of OZ Minerals which Minmetals acquired in 2009. The company said it put on hold the copper open pit project last year during the global financial crisis and restarted this year "as global commodity prices have improved."

The copper market has been recovering this month as the metal price rose about 10 percent. Shanghai Metals Market, a leading online metal portal, predicted the copper price to continue rising in the short term, bolstered by a stable United States dollar and a shortage of the metal.