Copper output from Codelco slips 6% in February

Reuters | April 10, 2025 | 1:16 pm Top Companies Latin America Copper

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Codelco’s Radomiro Tomic copper mine. (Image by Matt Hintsa, Flickr)

Copper production from Chilean state-run miner Codelco dipped 6% year-over-year in February, data from copper commission Cochilco showed on Thursday, slipping to 98,100 metric tons.

Codelco is the No. 1 miner of the red metal globally, but has struggled to boost declining output in recent years.

Meanwhile production at BHP’s Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper mine, leaped 16%, climbing to 113,400 tons.

At Collahuasi, another major copper mine jointly run by Glencore and Anglo American, output slid 62% to just 17,000 metric tons.

Anglo American’s Chile head, Patricio Hidalgo, told Reuters earlier this week that the firm expected output at the mine to be skewed toward the second half of the year.

“Due to the stage in the mine’s life cycle, development in 2025 was going to focus on minerals, which contain less copper,” he said.

(By Fabian Cambero and Kylie Madry; Editing by Natalia Siniawski)