The Mina Justa project came online in March this year, with a three-month delay due to the pandemic. With this project Empresas Copec and its mining subsidiary Alxar entered fully into the large-scale mining business in Peru.

However, thanks to strict protocols, the company has managed to keep contagions in check and is on track to reach design capacity of 150,000 tons of copper, which it aims to achieve by 2022.

At the same time, they continue to search for new projects both in Peru, where they have planned an eventual expansion of Mina Justa, and in Chile, where they are closely following the discussion regarding the parliamentary motion that seeks to introduce a mining royalty.

-What has this first year of operations in Peru been like?

‘It has been an extremely positive experience, the Peruvian professionals are very high quality. Fortunately, we have had no conflicts with communities, where we are located we have had an excellent relationship; the towns nearby have lived for several years in a relation with mining, and some of the most important things for us are the environmental, safety and community issues’.

-Have you been affected by the political instability in Peru?

‘The development of the project has been completely normal, our concerns are to achieve a good start-up, stability in production, positive safety indexes and in the midst of the pandemic, the instability of the markets around the world has been a concern, but in part we have benefited from the price of copper, that is what we have been focused on’.

-What is the outlook for the copper market?

‘This has three dimensions, the first was the decision to invest in copper, we decided to enter in a significant manner because we believe in this commodity and its future as a relevant source for the development of the world economy’.

‘The second dimension is that we know that copper has high price variability, but starting the development of this project now was not a coincidence, we had our inhouse analysis, and what the experts said was that from 2020 there would be a global shortage, which is strongly driving demand, in addition to the constant decline in the grades of large deposits, and the difficulty of developing new projects’.

‘A third dimension is that it has indeed been a value higher than we thought; we don’t know how long it will last, we knew that prices would be at a good level, but to say that we estimated that when we would start production it would be above US$ 4, it was impossible to predict’.

-When might new projects be announced?

‘Mina Justa was a long process, where we found the deposit and the partner we were looking for and with a lot of other conditions, so we want the next Alxar project to be the first cousin of this one, and that is difficult, it requires patience. Today our main priority is to make our investment profitable, to reach nominal production levels at good costs.’

-How do you see Chile’s current situation in this search for new projects?

‘As new projects arise, we have to make a full analysis, regarding the potential profitability and for that everything that is under development is going to be relevant. We are in the midst of a process of change, where Chile is defining its future. We had many years of growth with things that were done well, others could have been done better and now we are in a process of defining what we want for the new Chile and we are very confident that the institutional framework will be respected and rules that will be defined will allow us to feel part of this new country as citizens and, on the other hand, will allow the development of private enterprise’.

-Another discussion is the royalty project, do you see room to increase collection?

‘There is always room for improvement, it doesn’t mean more royalty or more taxes, it could be different types of taxes. In the end, the structure and what is important from the investor’s point of view is that the investment is profitable. There is always room for improvement, and if we want to operate in Chile, we have to commit ourselves to the new Chile, but stability is very important, in a mining project where several hundred million dollars are invested, the return on investment payment is achieved in the long term, so it is important to know the rules of the game and that they are complied with’.