Antamina obtains its ore from an open pit mine. The minerals are processed on site, transported through an underground pipeline and then shipped overseas from Huarmey on the Peruvian coast.

The minerals contained in the Antamina reserve were not readily recoverable. One of the biggest challenges involved removing a portion of several mountains and draining a lagoon to reach the mineral deposits. A huge open pit was created after four years of work. There was than 110 million tons of rock, that contained little or no ore, removed before actual ore recovery to begin. This material was then used to build Antamina’s stat-of-the-art tailings dam.

The initial exploratory work and the current operations demand highly skilled labor and high capacity equipment: five electric and four diesel drills with 11” and 12 ¼” drills in diameter, four electric Bucyrus shovels, three front-end loaders, and a fleet of 43 793C Caterpillar 240-ton trucks. The project also requires auxiliary equipment: six motorized Caterpillar graders, two 834B Caterpillar bulldozers, an 854G bulldozer, eight Caterpillar D10R bulldozers, two D8R and one D6R bulldozers, as well as two irrigation cisterns each with 20,000 gallon capacity.

Compañía Minera Antamina S.A. produces mineral concentrates in an open pit mine and has the following operating units for extraction and commercialization: