ABSTRACT
The story that I will tell across the pages to follow begins in Chile on the Western flank of the South American Andes. This ‘long petal of sea, wine and snow’, as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda famously described his homeland, is also the world’s principal source of copper. Chile accounts for around 32% of world copper production and 27% of world copper reserves. 1 Copper is a commodity central to our daily lives. It carries energy to our homes, and our voices across the telephone. Copper is used in our coins, our plumbing, the wiring of our electronics and even as building product in our hospitals to prevent infection. The copper deposits of the Chilean Andes have been mined for millennia, but industrial mining found its way to the continent in 1915, with breakthroughs in low-grade oxide mineral processing and the opening of the Chuquicamata mine.
