By Kylie Madry
SANTIAGO, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Output at Codelco’s El Teniente mine, the site of a deadly accident last year that has hit production, will be depressed for about the next five years, mine head Claudio Sougarret told Reuters on Tuesday.
The mine expects to produce 301,000 metric tons of the red metal this year, Sougarret said.
“We hope to be able to push that up a bit,” he said, though he cautioned that it would “likely be around there, and will be there for the next five years.”
Codelco, the world’s largest copper miner, had previously said that production would be hit for the next three years.
Last year, a collapse at the site killed several workers and a section of the mine has remained shuttered since.
“We hope that, based on the studies we’ve done, we’re able to recover the minerals on the north side (of the mine),” Sougarret said.
(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)
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