Australia's Oxiana hungry for mergers, buys

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Australian miner Oxiana OXR.AX is scouring for mergers and acquisitions and is looking to move beyond its traditional markets of Asia and Australia and into Africa and Latin America, CEO Owen Hegarty said on Wednesday.

"We're always looking for the bolt-on style, the smaller guys. That's how we've been successful in the past," Hegarty told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the CESCO/CRU copper conference in Chile.

"They're the sort of things we're looking at, whether they be in copper, other base and precious metals, gold, lead, silver, zinc, nickel and even moving outside that square too."

Oxiana is in the middle of a A$6.1 billion takeover of fellow Australian miner Zinifex ZFX.AX

(Reporting by Simon Gardner)