Minera Escondida: The world's largest copper producer
Located in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, Minera Escondida produces more copper than any other mine in the world.
In fact, the mine is so big that NASA has released images of Minera Escondida from space (pictured below).
In production since 1990, Minera Escondida is an open-pit mine that produces copper concentrate by a flotation process of sulfide ore, and copper cathodes via a leaching process of oxide and sulfide ore.
Producing 8% of the world's copper, Minera Escondida accounts for 2.5% of Chile's gross domestic product, directly employing 4,200 people full-time.
An additional 8,000 permanent jobs are related to the mine and its operations. Various expansion projects have also temporarily increased the workforce at Minera Escondida.
While the mine has been in production for 25 years, there have been numerous expansion projects through those years at Minera Escondida. At this time, there are four major projects ongoing at Minera Escondida accounting for more than US$8bn in investment, according to BNamericas Projects:
- the US$4.2bn Organic Growth Project (OGP1) that will replace the Los Colorados concentrator with a new one to increase throughput capacity to 277,000t/d;
- a US$3.45bn desalination plant that is currently under construction;
- the associated desalination pipeline upgrade estimated at a cost of US$290mn;
- and the Kelar combined cycle power plant which will provide 540MW of thermoelectric capacity at an estimated cost of US$400mn.
Minera Escondida is operated by BHP Billiton with a 57.5% interest; partners on the mine are Rio Tinto with 30%, JECO (a Japanese consortium including Mitsubishi Corp, JX Nippon Mining & Metals Corp and Mitsubishi Materials Corp) with 10%, and IFC with 2.5% participating interest. Minera Escondida Ltda is the company formed to operate the mine.
Some of the major contractors and service providers for Minera Escondida through initial development and the ongoing expansions include Fluor, Bechtel, Sigdo Koppers, Samsung Engineering and Alstom.
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