A unit of state-owned metal trader China Minmetals Corp. said Wednesday it is in talks to acquire an interest in Glencore Xstrata PLC’s Las Bambas project, its first statement that the giant Peruvian copper mine is in its sights.

People familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that Hong Kong-listed MMG Ltd. is a part of consortium comprising state-owned conglomerate Citic Group Corp. unit Citic Metal Co. and government-controlled Guoxin International Investment Corp., which is close to reaching an agreement with Glencore Xstrata on Las Bambas.

Managers from Glencore and China Minmetals Corp., which is leading the Chinese consortium, were set to meet in London on Tuesday with an aim toward signing an agreement, the people said.

“No binding agreement has been reached in connection with the acquisition,” MMG Chief Executive Andrew Michelmore said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday, without further elaboration.

Glencore agreed to sell Las Bambas to secure approval from China’s Ministry of Commerce for Glencore International PLC’s acquisition of Xstrata PLC, which created the world’s fourth-biggest mining company and the world’s biggest commodities trader.

If signed, the deal would be the biggest acquisition by China of an overseas mining asset since 2008, when state-owned Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chinalco, took a 12% stake in Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto PLC for $14 billion, according to Dealogic.

A deal would cap months of sometimes-strained negotiations. As recently as last month, the parties hit a snag over price, pushing talks beyond an internal March 4 deadline to reach a deal. The price the Chinese consortium will pay has yet to be determined and will be completed at the London meeting, one of the people said.

The consortium became the front-runner for the asset earlier this year, other people familiar with the deal said in January. At the time, they said Las Bambas would likely be sold for more than $5 billion.

The $5.9 billion Las Bambas mine was about 56% complete at the end of 2013, and is expected to start production in the second half of next year. Glencore has forecast annual output for the first 10 years at 460,000 metric tons of copper in concentrate. Glencore expects $2.4 billion will be spent this year and next to complete the project