China group buys $6bn Glencore Peru copper mine

Big news in the metals markets today: the commodities giant Glencore Xstrata has sold its stake in the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru to a consortium of Chinese firms - for nearly 6 billion dollars.

So what are they getting for their money? Well, the mine is hidden away in one of the remotest parts of the Andes mountains, in the south of Peru. It's a major engineering project, which has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up.

Once production begins, in 2015, It's expected to provide more than 400,000 tonnes of copper a year. And that's the key. China wants that copper - badly. It needs it to feed its rapidly growing industry.

So why is copper so important? To find out, the BBC's Theo Legget went for a stroll around central London with Mark Burton - an expert from the metals bulletin: