Minera Escondida is a mining company that operates two open pit copper mines in the Atacama Desert, 170 km southeast of Antofagasta in northern Chile. It is currently the highest producing copper mine in the world. Its 2007 production of 1.483 million tons of the metal was worth US$10.12 billion, mainly as metal in concentrate, but some as cathode, and was 9.5% of world output and 26% of Chilean production, according to the US Geological Survey's preliminary estimates of 2007 world mine output.
Codelco is a Chilean state-owned copper mining company. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationalised in 1971.
Vedanta Limited is an Indian multinational mining company headquartered in Mumbai, India, with its main operations in iron ore, gold and aluminium mines in Goa, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Odisha.
Boliden AB is a Swedish multinational metals, mining, and smelting company headquartered in Stockholm. The company produces zinc, copper, lead, nickel, silver, and gold, with operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Ireland.
National Aluminium Company Limited is an Indian public sector company having integrated and diversified operations in mining, metal and power. Presently, the Government of India holds a 51.5% equity stake in NALCO, while the Ministry of Mines has administrative control over the company.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, more commonly known as Kennecott Copper Mine among locals, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is the largest man-made excavation, and deepest open-pit mine in the world, which is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history – more than 19,000,000 short tons. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, a British-Australian multinational corporation. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1,210 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine. The mine experienced a massive landslide in April 2013 and a smaller slide in September 2013.
Asarel Medet is a Bulgarian company extracting and processing copper. The mine and the processing factory are situated at 11 km to the northwest of the town of Panagyurishte in the Pazardzhik Province, Bulgaria. It extracts over 13 million tons of copper ore every year and produces copper concentrate which is sold worldwide, including to the Pirdop copper smelter and refinery at about 25 km north of Panagyurishte. The ore also contains molybdenum, nickel, gold, silver. The number of employees is 1,200, not including 400 hired in its subsidiaries. In addition, the company attracts 6,400 indirect jobs in the region and nationwide in different related services. It is the largest employer and tax payer in Pazardzhik Province. Asarel Medet produces copper concentrate and cathode, mainly used as raw materials for copper smelters and partially for the chemical and ceramics industry. The company produces about 200 thousand tons of natural copper concentrate annually with 25% copper grade.
Mount Isa Mines Limited ("MIM") operates the Mount Isa copper, lead, zinc and silver mines near Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia as part of the Glencore group of companies. For a brief period in 1980, MIM was Australia's largest company. It has pioneered several significant mining industry innovations, including the Isa Process copper refining technology, the Isasmelt smelting technology, and the IsaMill fine grinding technology, and it also commercialized the Jameson Cell column flotation technology.
Cuprom is the sole producer of electrolytic copper, continuous cast copper rod and enameled wire in Romania and the largest in Eastern Europe.
Jiangxi Copper is the largest copper producer in Mainland China. Its operations include copper mining, milling, smelting and refining to produce copper-related products, including pyrite concentrates, sulfuric acid and electrolytic gold and silver. Its chairman is Mr. Li Yuhuang and its headquarters is at Guixi, Jiangxi, China.
Lundin Mining Corporation is a Canadian company that owns and operates mines in Sweden, United States, Chile, Portugal and Brazil that produce base metals such as copper, zinc, and nickel. Headquartered in Toronto, the company was founded by Adolf Lundin and operated by Lukas Lundin. While it was incorporated to pursue an interest in a diamond mine in Brazil, the company re-structured and raised funds to develop the Storliden mine in Sweden. It purchased the Swedish Zinkgruvan Mine from Rio Tinto and then merged with Arcon International Resources for its Galmoy Mine in Ireland and Eurozinc for its Neves-Corvo mine in Portugal. The company subsequently purchased and operated the Eagle mine, Candelaria mine, and Chapada mine.
Hindustan Zinc Limited (HZL) is an Indian integrated mining and resources producer of zinc, lead, silver and cadmium. It is a subsidiary of Vedanta Limited. Earlier it was a Central Public Sector Undertaking, sold by Government of India to Vedanta Limited when Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Bharatiya Janta Party Government was in power in the year 2003. HZL is the world's second largest zinc producer.
The Toquepala mine is a large porphyry copper mine in the Tacna Province, Tacna Department, Peru. The mine is an open-pit mine producing copper, molybdenum, rhenium and silver with minor gold and zinc.
Shituru is a town that is now a commune of the city of Likasi in Haut-Katanga province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also the location of a copper mine, smelter and hydrometallurgical plant that was operated by the state-owned Gécamines.
The Ruashi Mine is an open-pit copper and cobalt mine operated by Metorex that is located about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Lubumbashi in Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The project includes a plant to concentrate the ore from the Ruashi and Etoile mines, and a modern solvent extraction electrowinning (SX-EW) processing plant. As of 2008, annual capacity was estimated to be 10,000 tonnes of copper and 1,000 tonnes of Cobalt.
The Kamoto Mine is an underground copper and cobalt mine to the west of Musonoi in the former Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. As of 2022, the site is the largest active cobalt mine in the world. The mine includes the Luilu metallurgical plant, which accepts ore from KOV mine and Mashamba East mine. The plant has polluted the Luilu River, and tailings also pollute the region with wind-blown dust. The Kolwezi Tailings Project is an attempt to recover additional metal from these tailings.
Mopani Copper Mines PLC is a Zambian company owned by ZCCM Investment Holdings.
The IsaKidd Technology is a copper electrorefining and electrowinning technology that was developed independently by Copper Refineries Proprietary Limited (“CRL”), a Townsville, Queensland subsidiary of MIM Holdings Limited, and at the Falconbridge Limited (“Falconbridge”) now-dismantled Kidd Creek refinery that was at Timmins, Ontario. It is based around the use of reusable cathode starter sheets for copper electrorefining and the automated stripping of the deposited “cathode copper” from them.
Copper production in India is only about 2 percent of world copper production in view of its potential reserve limited to 60,000 km2 of which 20,000 km2 area has been subject to exploration, as of 2012. But in production it is still within the first 20 countries of the world and also one of its largest importers in line with China, Japan, South Korea and Germany. As of April 2005 survey by the Indian Bureau of Mines the total reserve has been estimated as 1394.42 million tonnes out of which 369.49 million tonnes (26.5%) is categorized as “reserves”. The balance 1024.93 million tonnes is termed under “remaining resources”.
