Copper output from Codelco down nearly 5% this year, but recovery expected
Chile’s state-owned miner Codelco reported 918,000 metric tons of its own copper output from January through September, down 4.9% from the first nine months of last year, a filing to the country’s financial regulator showed on Wednesday.
The miner’s copper production during the third quarter was 338,000 tons, up 2% from a year earlier.
The world’s top copper miner is pushing to overcome declining ore levels in some of its main deposits, seeking to boost production despite problems with its priority mining projects.
“This quarter we broke the trendline and began to recover production. We’ll keep up all our efforts so that our indicators keep improving through the end of the year,” chief executive officer Ruben Alvarado said in a separate statement.
If production attributed to its mining partners Freeport, Anglo American and Teck are added, total copper output during the first nine months of this year reached 1.002 million tons, according to the statement.
The world’s top copper miner announced that January-September production of the red metal generated $612 million in pre-tax profits, according to the filing, swinging from a loss of $76 million during the first nine months of last year.
The company’s core profits reached $4.022 billion, up by nearly a quarter from the year-ago period.
Codelco, which turns over all profits to the government, added it sees total 2024 copper production of between 1.325 million and 1.352 million tons, which would be below an initial estimate of as much as 1.390 million tons.
The company also provided a timeline for a pair of projects within its Teniente copper mine, noting it expects the Andres Norte project to start production during the first quarter of next year, while Andesita should come online in the “coming months.”
Its Rajo Inca project is undergoing tests, the statement said, and should begin production during the final months of this year.
