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The mineral deposit of Antamina is the largest known copper-zinc, silver, molybdenum and bismuth skarn in the world. In the year 2000, the deposit was calculated to contain 559 million tones of reserves with 1.23% Cu, 1.03% Zn, 13.7g/t Ag and 0.029% Mo.

Antamina is an open pit mine and one of the main characteristics of its design are the 15-meter high exploitation benches. The mine produces 360,000 tons daily and operates 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, in 12 hour shifts, making it one of the top 10 volume mines in the world.

Work began to remove sterile rock in 1999. The mine is currently 2,000 meters long, 1,000 meters wide and 500 meters deep.

Initial drilling was followed by blasting charges three times a week. Similar to the drilling, all information related to the use of explosives is registered in order to evaluate the results of each explosion.
 
 

The need for drilling and blasting is linked to the mining rate of the heavy equipment that requires a minimum reserve of fractured material. The main challenge of drilling and blasting is to obtain optimally fractured material.

Once the material is fractured, the loading process begin. The fractured material is sent on a conveyer belt through a 2.6 km tunnel that crosses the mountain between Antamina and Yanacancha canyons.

The material is stockpiled according to its ore-type. All non-ore material is taken to the respective waste dumps.

The stockpiled material is transported to the primary Fuller crusher, which has an average capacity of 80,000 tons a day. There, huge blocks of ore are reduced to 5-inch blocks, ready to enter the concentrator plant.
 
The Mine • The Concentrator •  Port