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Copper mining in Chile

Production trends in the top five copper-producing countries, 1950-2012
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Location of the five largest copper mines by copper production[1] and the two active custom copper smelters of Chile. Note that more copper smelters exist but these are usually integrated within the mines.

Chile is the world's largest producer of copper[2] and has been so uninterruptedly since 1983. This activity provides a substantial part of the Chilean state's revenue: slightly less than 6% in 2020, with state-owned copper company Codelco alone generating 2.6% of state revenue.[3][A]

Mining of copper in Chile is done chiefly on giant low-grade porphyry copper deposits which are primarily mined by the following companies; Codelco, BHP, Antofagasta Minerals, Anglo American and Glencore. Together these companies stood for 83.6% of the copper output in Chile in 2019 and many copper mining companies are joint ventures involving one at least one of these.[4] Medium-scale mining in Chile, which focuses mainly on copper, produced about 4.5% of the copper mined in the country from 2017 to 2021.[5] Copper is also the main product of small-scale mining in Chile, with about 95% of small-scale miners working in copper mining.[6][B] One estimate puts the number of active copper mines in Chile in 2023 at 67.[1] In the 2005–2024 period 81–89% of the annual copper production in Chile has been mined in open pits and the remainder in underground mines.[7]

The amount of copper mined in Chile has remained relatively constant at 5,212 to 5,831 thousand tons of copper yearly in the 2005–2024 period, but due to increased copper mining outside Chile the country's share of the world's produce has dropped from 36% to 24% in the same period.[7] Also in the same period 36% to 72% of the gold and more than half of the silver produced annually in Chile was a by-product of copper mining.[7] The grade of copper ores mined in Chile has diminished since 2000 due to depletion and increased profitability of low-grade ore due to high copper prices.[8][C] The amount of water consumed and greenhouse gases emitted per ton copper produced has also diminished since 2001.[8]

Most copper mined in Chile is exported to China. Far behind China, other important export destinations for Chilean copper are Japan, United States and South Korea.[10] In the 2020s unrefined copper concentrate have stood for about 5⁄8 of the value of Chilean copper exports, while copper cathode refined in Chile stands for the remaining 3⁄8.

The governance of copper mining in Chile is done by non-overlapping bodies; COCHILCO, ENAMI, the National Geology and Mining Service (SERNAGEOMIN) and the Ministry of Mining.[6] SONAMI and Consejo Minero are corporate guilds of mining companies in Chile.[11]

  1. ^ a b "The five largest copper mines in operation in Chile". Mining Technology. 2024-06-24. Retrieved 2025-04-12.
  2. ^ Copper production in 2024 by USGS
  3. ^ a b Corvera Vergara, María Teresa (2021-06-02). Aporte de la minería del cobre a las arcas fiscales: Proyección para el año 2021 (PDF) (Report) (in Spanish). Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference thjapan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Guajardo et al. 2023, p. 22.
  6. ^ a b c Scholvin, Sören; Atienza, Miguel. "La formalización de la pequeña minería en Chile: logros y desafíos de la Empresa Nacional de Minería (ENAMI)". Investigaciones Geográficas (in Spanish). 66: 1–13.
  7. ^ a b c Cifras actualizadas de la minería (Report) (in Spanish). Consejo Minero. 2025-03-01. pp. 5, 29, 31–32.
  8. ^ a b Lagos, Gustavo; Peters, David; Videla, Alvaro; Jara, José Joaquín (2018). "The effect of mine aging on the evolution of environmental footprint indicators in the Chilean copper mining industry 2001–2015". Journal of Cleaner Production. 174: 389–400. Bibcode:2018JCPro.174..389L. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.290.
  9. ^ Farías, Antonio; Cancino, Christian; Coronado, Freddy (2016). Caso Compañía Minera Lomas Bayas (PDF) (Report) (in Spanish). Facultad de Economía y Negocios de la Universidad de Chile. Retrieved 2025-05-06.
  10. ^ International Copper Study Group, The World Copper Factbook 2024 (PDF), p. 53, archived (PDF) from the original on 19 December 2024, retrieved 19 December 2024
  11. ^ Ulloa Urrutia et al. 2017, p. 50.


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