The El Teniente deposit is a porphyry-type ore body. The deposit covers a vertical span of over 1,500 meters. A tabular subvertical dacite porphyry intrusion two kilometers long by 200 meters wide is well exposed in the northern part of the deposit, and a quartz-diorite stock is located at the southeast side. Wall rock are mostly andesites, which are strongly mineralized, containing a high concentration of chalcopyrite and bornite. The size of the deposit is at least three kilometers north-south and close to one kilometer wide.

Chile’s El Teniente deposit is the largest known porphyry Cu-Mo orebody (>70 Mt Cu), and is genetically related to Late Miocene–Early Pliocene igneous activity on the western slopes of the Andean Cordillera (cf. Howell and Molloy, 1960, Camus, 1975, Cuadra, 1986, Skewes and Stern, 1995). The deposit is 2700 m long by 1000 to 1700 m wide and is elongated in a N-S direction, with a recognized vertical extent of about 1800 m. Approximately 80% of the copper at El Teniente is distributed within a stockwork of mineralized veinlets and minor hydrothermal breccias within pervasively altered andesites, basalts and gabbros that are part of the Upper Miocene country rocks. Two intrusive bodies occur within the deposit, the Sewell Diorite (actually a tonalite) in the southeast part of the orebody and the dacitic Teniente Porphyry in its northern part. The Teniente Porphyry occurs as a north-south trending dike 1500 m long and 200 m wide. Minor quartz-d ........

A typical level model used at El Teniente mine: block caving, production, ventilation, transport and crushing.

(Translated from Spanish)
Teniente Projects Portfolio consists of the following projects: Andes Norte Nuevo Nivel Mina (NNM), Diamante and Andesita, formerly Nuevo Nivel Mina, the original project, and which will extend the division operations by 50 years. We started mining Teniente Level 9, the deepest level compared to other areas currently in production.

In November 2022, Codelco launched the first 100% electric underground LHD (Load, Haul, Dump) mining loader in South America, which began its pilot test in the El Teniente Division. Developed by Epiroc, it can load up to 14 tons of material without generating direct greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

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