“We see this project as a huge transformation for our company,” Conger said. “It’s by far the biggest thing that we have done from a construction standpoint and one of the biggest in the industry.”
He added: “We have a stated objective strategy to be a large copper producer over the next 10 to 15 years and we have the mineral in the ground to do that – and the team and know-how.”
Located in Chile’s Región de Tarapacá, about 165 km from the region’s capital city of Iquique, the Quebrada Blanca (QB) deposit’s oxidized top layer was mined by Teck from 1994 to 2018. After mining ceased, the operation shifted its focus to extracting secondary copper from previous leach piles.
