“The real potential we are trying to unearth is – can Santa Cecilia, sandwiched between two major deposits which are currently suspended, tip the economic scale for the entire complex?” 

“Although the HSE gold deposit at Valeriano is an interesting resource, we were more interested in the copper porphyry at depth and built a conceptual model of what the project could look like, followed by a financing round to further drill the deposit.”

“Essentially, Amerigo works with an environmental liability – tailings – and extracts further economic value from that by producing copper concentrates. In many ways, we are more of a copper factory than a mining operation.” 

“We have been focused on organic growth because we recognize there are opportunities within Freeport’s existing assets to leverage them and produce additional copper. El Abra is a good example of this, as long as the conditions for investment make sense.” 

“Once in production, QB2 will double our consolidated copper production by 2023 and significantly reweight our portfolio more towards copper at a time when we see significant rising demand fueled by the transition to the low-carbon economy.” 

“We have developed a proprietary chloride leaching process for primary sulphides – Cuprochlor-T. This technology will allow us, over time, to produce copper cathodes from low grade primary sulphide minerals at reduced operating and capital costs, and with a smaller water and carbon footprint.”