The Chuquicamata district includes the Chuquicamata and Radomiro Tomic megadeposits, the exotic copper deposit Mina Sur, the newly developed Ministro Hales mine (formerly known as Mansa Mina) located 5.5 km south of Chuquicamata, and the deposits of the Toki cluster (Toki, Genoveva, Quetena, Miranda, and Opache) located about 15 km SSW of Chuquicamata.

The deposits of the district are located in the Late Eocene–Early Oligocene (43–31 Ma) porphyry copper belt that extends for about 1,400 km, from 18°S to 31°S (Sillitoe 1988; Sillitoe and Perelló 2005). The rocks in the area range in age from Paleozoic to Tertiary. The main structural feature observed is the West Fault, which is part of the Domeyko Fault System (Boric et al. 1990; Dilles et al. 1997) and divides the district in two domains: an eastern domain and a western domain.

In 2019, the historic Chuquicamata deposit began to ramp down production in the open pit make the shift to a high-tech underground mine operation.

Chuquicamata Subterránea will transform the century-old Chuquicamata open-pit mine, the largest in the world, into a modern large-scale underground operation using the block caving method of exploitation, extending the life of the division by at least 40 years.

The ore will be extraced through an extensive “block caving” operation, by installing four production levels. 140.000 tons of ore will be mined and treated per day, making Chuquicamata one of the largest mining operations on the globe

The new mine design for PMCHS is based on the following mine production process:

1. Initiates with the use of rock mass intensive preconditioning, which consists of the application of hydraulic fracturing and confined blasting to improve rock mass fragmentation and caveability.

2. Continues with the application of a high undercut (20 m) in order to minimise flow detentions at the initial part of the ore column extraction.

3. Caved ore is loaded by 20 t LHDs at the drawpoints, transported and directly tipped into a 500 t run-of-mine bin that feeds a wide feed gyratory crusher.

4. Crushed ore transported by an intermediate conveyor belt that feeds the main ore handling system.

Sulphide ore is processed in the concentrator. The mill employs two 32-ft SAG mills feeding a complex arrangement of rod and ball mills. A final grind size of 219 microns is achieved before the slurry is passed on to flotation.

The Chuquicamata Division predominantly sulfide concentrates that are smelted and refined largely on site to yield electro-refined and electro-won copper cathodes.

The mill head grade for sulfide processing is approximately 0.8% Cu and also contains significant amounts of molybdenum making two separate concentrates viable. The final copper concentrate is smelted and then refined prior to shipment.

The concentrator contains a separate circuit for recovery of copper from the on-site smelter slag. Slag can contain between 8 and 10% Cu and is sent to its own process line containing a SAG mill two ball mills, and floatation circuit

The Chuquicamata mine’s smelting process involves two stages: a smelting stage and a conversion stage. The smelting stage converts copper concentrate, with 29 to 33 percent purity, into a high temperature liquid mixture with a higher copper purity depending on the equipment used: a flash furnace (FF) or one of the teniente convert ........