A common target for the thieves is Antofagasta Plc’s logistics unit Grupo FCAB, which owns and operates about 700 kilometers of railway lines used to transport cathode and semi-processed copper.
Thieves leap from trucks onto trains as they roll through Chile’s Atacama Desert, before throwing 80-kilo slabs of copper to the ground and disappearing.
Company believes its Cascabel copper-gold project, 180 km north of the capital Quito, may become one of the largest copper-gold porphyry systems ever discovered.