SANTIAGO – Chile’s Codelco is to accept applications from people interested to work in one of the company’s flagship projects – the much-needed underground expansion of its century-old Chuquicamata mine.
About 150 workers will be pre-selected as a result of the process, which closes on Dec. 24, El Mercurio de Calama reported (in Spanish).
Chuquicamata is one of Codelco’s largest, but also oldest operations.
They’ll join the over 1,100 Codelco employees already working on the $18 billion expansion project, originally approved in 2010, and modified earlier this year.
The copper giant is expected to spend a total of $4 billion in the underground expansion, to be completed in 2019, and which will allow Chuquicamata to remain in operations. Once at full tilt, by 2025, the mine is expected to produce 1.7 million tonnes of the red metal a year, according to Mining.com.
Codelco, the world’s top copper producer, generates around a tenth of the global copper supply.
