AUSTRALIAN iron ore developer Sundance Resources Ltd said it has been approached by "numerous groups" of investors keen to develop its main project in West Africa, after it ended talks with troubled Chinese company Sichuan Hanlong Group last month.

"These groups come from a range of countries and have widely diversified interests in areas such as resource projects, infrastructure provision and steel making," Chairman George Jones said in a letter to shareholders yesterday.

They have expressed "a range of views about how it would be possible to structure transactions which bring them into" the Mbalam-Nabeba project on the border of Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, including the potential for some of them to provide port and rail solutions through to direct investment, he said.

"While some of these talks are more advanced than others, all current discussions remain incomplete and confidential," Jones added.

Jones' comments, which lifted Sundance's shares 24 percent in Sydney yesterday, were a bid to reassure shareholders that interest in the project still strong after it ended protracted talks with Hanlong over a US$1.4 billion takeover deal.

The deal collapsed after the Sichuan Province-based company failed to secure funding and that its chairman, Liu Han, was reportedly in police custody. Xinhua news agency said he was also being investigated for other serious criminal offences.