Chuqui

A mine that staggers the imagination is Chuquicamata, the granddaddy of them all. In 1968 production exceeded 300,000 tons of copper. Production began in 1915 and mining proceeded solely on oxide ores until 1953 when the first treatment of sulfides began. Today the company has mined about 1.2 billion tons of all types of material since inception. The accelerating rate of output can be gauged by the comparable 1946 figure of production-to-date which was 350 million tons. No single mine comes close to touching Chuqui for productivity at its high annual metal yield mining only 90,000 tpd of ore at the luxurious waste-to-ore ratio of 0.6 to 1. However, the complexity of the operation is enormous and the experience required to synchronize the various processes is masked by normal operations and only becomes apparent in times of emergency such as when the slide took place in the pit in February.