Copper production from Chile rose nearly 5% last year

Reuters | February 7, 2025 | 9:50 am Intelligence Latin America Copper

From digging to electric fields: new technique proposed to extract metals from hard rock ore

Chile’s Escondida is the world’s largest producer of copper concentrates and cathodes. (Image: BHP.)

Copper output from Chile, the metal’s top global producer, rose 4.9% to reach 5.5 million metric tons last year, according to data from copper commission Cochilco released on Friday.

Commission data also showed that December copper production from state-owned miner Codelco rose almost 22% in the month to reach 172,700 tons.

Production from BHP’s Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper mine, increased 51% in December to total 133,600 tons while major mine Collahuasi, jointly run by Glencore and Anglo American, saw its output of the key industrial metal fall 32% to settle at 41,200 tons.

(By Fabian Andres Cambero; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)