Latin America

Standing at the rim of Chile's Chuquicamata open pit, visitors confront a paradox of modern engineering: a vast terraced amphitheatre carved into the Atacama Desert over generations now sits largely silent, while the real action unfolds invisibly beneath their feet. This copper colossus—once the world's largest open-pit mine—has completed one of the most ambitious infrastructure pivots in mining history, transitioning its operations underground to extend its productive life well beyond 2060.
 

In the pulsating heart of the global energy transition, copper has ascended to unparalleled prominence, wielding its influence over technologies that propel us into a sustainable future. In this electric symphony, the Quellaveco Copper Mine in Peru emerges as a dynamic maestro, not merely mitigating the echoes of a looming global copper shortage but orchestrating a transformative saga of innovation, sustainability, and community harmony.

Sitting on South America's North Atlantic coast, Guyana – meaning the Land of Many Waters – is undergoing one of the most significant infrastructure transformations since its independence in 1970.

One of Panama's most significant investments, the Cobre Panama copper and gold mine, is making good progress following last year's Covid-19-related production interruptions. "The second quarter saw continued strong operational and financial performance. We are pleased to see the progress at Cobre Panama as it ramps up to the targeted 85-million tonnes of throughput in 2021.

Codelco, Chile's National Copper Corporation, is the world's leading copper producer and one of Chile's largest companies. The Codelco Salvador Division is located in the district of Diego de Almagro, in the Atacama Region. Its operations, which date back to 1959, are located in the Andes mountain range at 2,600 meters high, 1100 kilometers north of Santiago. This Division has been in operation since 1959 and has two types of deposits, the underground "Inca" mine and the open pit "Campamento Antiguo" and "Damiana Norte" mines.

In a previous visit to Barrick Gold’s Pueblo Viejo mine in 2019, Business Excellence noted that the success of the firm was inextricably linked to the success of the Dominican Republic’s mining industry. A joint venture with Newmont, total investments in the Pueblo Viejo mine have already passed $1.3 billion. To put this in context, 2019 was a record year for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Dominican Republic, and total FDI was estimated at a little over $3 billion.

Costa Rica is a Latin American success story. Over the past quarter century, it has enjoyed consistent economic growth, while managing to maintain its unique biodiversity, thanks to Costa Rica being the only country in the world to have reversed deforestation. It has managed to do all this while growing its salaries by over 300% over the past two decades. For any country, this would constitute remarkable progress.

Transportadora de Energía de Centroamérica S.A. –TRECSA– is a Guatemalan subsidiary of Grupo Energía Bogotá (GEB) which provides management, development, operation and maintenance services for energy transportation infrastructure. Through electrical infrastructure and state-of-the-art technology, the company transports reliable and safe energy to Guatemala. 

When Business Excellence last visited El Teniente in June 2019, global copper prices were hovering at around $6,000 per ton, in a year of price declines for all base metals. What a difference two years have made; in 2021, copper is trading at close to $10,000 per ton, and continues on a consistent upward trend that began in the first quarter of 2020 - just as Covid-19 was arriving in Latin America.