The Chilean Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, recently paid a visit to the Escondida | BHP mining site located 170 km inside the Antofagasta Region, to learn about the growth plan of the company.
He was received by the President of Escondida | BHP, Alejandro Tapia, who presented the projects that the company will execute over the next decade to strengthen its capacity productive and maintain current production levels. The initiatives would add up to US$10,800 million, the highest investment in the history of Escondida.
The first growth initiative will be the optimisation of the current Laguna Seca concentrator, which involves an investment of more than US$2,000 million. BHP plans on submitting the plan for environmental permitting soon. The expansion is focused on both the Laguna Seca 1 (130,000 t/d, one SAG mill and four ball mills) and Laguna Seca 2 (147,000 t/d, one SAG mill and four ball mills) to improve the existing facilities via debottlenecking – increasing throughput by 40,000 t/d (around 15 Mt/y) and improving recovery by about 1-5 ppt from 85%.
“It is a pride to be able to present Escondida’s growth plan to Minister Marcel. It’s a plan
which will not only allow us to maintain the production of our operation, but also implies making a significant investment of more than US$10,000 million that will benefit the country and the Region of Antofagasta,” said Tapia.
For his part, the Minister of Finance Mario Marcel celebrated this initiative: “The importance of investment for the growth of the Chilean economy is frequently discussed, but many times our attention is directed towards investments that, although they are important in their respective sectors due to their magnitude, do not set the needle as much at an aggregate level. This is a case that does move the needle.”
The Head of the Treasury added: “Foreign investment, for the most part, is not from companies who are now settling in Chile. It is from companies that have been producing for many years in Chile, who are developing their projects, who are finding new opportunities for investment, or new investment needs, and they often use their own profits to reinvest them in those projects. This is the case of Escondida BHP, a company that has been around for 34 years. in Chile. Escondida has been an example and has exercised leadership in Chilean mining.”
During the visit, Minister Marcel was able to tour the operation, and see the industrial zone where the investments will be made.
