El Teniente Division became the best Codelco’s operation in 2013
The exploitation of mineral in an open pit area besides increase of underground production explain the increase. Site located in Region VI moved Radomiro Tomic from the first place
Despite the decline in mineral-laws of percentage of copper extracted per ton of earth-Codelco sustained its level of production in 2013.
The company last year reached a total of 1.79 million tons of red mineral, which is an improvement of 2% over 2012’s 1.75 million.
One of the reasons for this result is the good performance exhibited by a flagship statecompany divisions: El Teniente.
The site located in Region VI recorded a record production of 450 000 tons, surpassing its previous peak dating from 2005. In that season the task reached 437 thousand tons.
Furthermore, the production of last year exceeds 8% increase compared to 2012 when Codelco El Teniente scored 417 000 tons.
The reasons for the increase are related to open pit operation that began to run the site in 2012. The area called Rajo Sur contributed last year 56,000 tons of copper, to which almost 400 thousand tons which recorded its traditional operation are added to ground level.
To exploit the mineral in the surface, Codelco invested U.S. $ 265 million. This area has reserves of nearly 33.8 million tons of ore and 237 tons of fine copper.
Also during the past year a number of production adjustments into the underground site were made, which allowed increased mineral extraction.-
Moreover, it also managed to increase the recovery of molybdenum-copper byproduct-from 60% to 69% after the optimization process.
All these works are in addition to the $ 3.424 million that is running the company in the structural design Nuevo Nivel Mina El Teniente, to be in production by 2017.
Main Division
This strong increase also allowed the labor located in Rancagua be positioned for the first time in its history as the most productive of the company, after beating Radomiro Tomic (RT). The latter fell from 427,000 to 380,000 tons of copper extraction, passing second.
The drop in RT responds to the damage caused by the five days cessation of work suffered the site in March and deteriorating ore grades by depletion of the oxide line.
With this reduction, the site located in Antofagasta lost productive leadership after two years at the top among all divisions.
In turn, Chuquicamata reached 339 thousand tons, representing a decrease of 4% compared to 2012.
Regarding projections for 2014 from the state company say the goal is to reach 1.9 million tons. This figure is supported largely by the 160,000 tons Ministro Hales will add besides the productivity improvements in Chuquicamata, El Teniente and Radomiro Tomic.-
Source: El Mercurio
