RIYADH, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Tuesday

agreed nine investment deals in metals and mining worth more

than 35 billion riyals ($9.32 billion) with companies including

India's Vedanta and China's Zijin Group.

The deals were announced during the World Investment

Conference in Riyadh by the Global Supply Chain Resilience

Initiative, a government programme under the Saudi government's

National Investment Strategy.

The kingdom's growing mining industry is part of the Vision

2030 plan to diversify the economy and cut reliance on fossil

fuels. The government hopes to attract $100 billion a year in

foreign investment under the plan by 2030, achieving just over a

quarter of that last year.

Oil to metals conglomerate Vedanta will build copper

facilities with a capital expenditure of 7.5 billion riyals at

Ras Al-Khair, a conference presentation showed, including a

smelter and refinery with capacity of 400,000 metric tons per

annum (tpa) and a 300,000 tpa copper rod plant.

The project will ensure domestic self-sufficiency in copper

production and contribute an estimated 70 billion riyals to

economic growth, according to the presentation.

Zijin will invest 5 billion to 6 billion riyals, with a

first phase focused on building a zinc smelter with capacity for

100,000 tpa of zinc ingots and 200,000 tpa of sulphuric acid.

A second phase will see the construction of a lithium

carbonate extraction facility to produce 60,000 tpa of

battery-grade lithium carbonate, and in a final phase a copper

refinery will be built with output of 200,000 tpa of copper

cathodes and about 50,000 tpa of electrolytic copper foil.

Australia's Hastings Technology Metals ( HSRMF ) will build

processing facilities for rare earth elements in several phases

for a total investment of 5.6 billion to 7.2 billion riyals.

The phases include a hydrometallurgical processing plant, a

solvent extraction separation facility, a rare earth elements

downstream processing facility and sourcing rare earth elements

from mines in Saudi Arabia.

Vancouver-based Platinum Group Metals ( PLG ) is conducting

studies with local firm Ajlan & Bros Mining to build a 1.9

billion riyal platinum group metals smelter and base metals

refinery. Feedstock will come from South Africa's Waterberg

mine, which the Canadian group is developing.

($1 = 3.7560 riyals)