Santiago (Platts)--24Jan2013/428 pm EST/2128 GMT

Chile's Codelco, the world's largest producer of copper, will focus this year on capping rising production costs, which rose 30% last year, interim CEO Ivan Arriagada said Thursday.

"We believe that in the field of improving productivity and costs, we should make a transversal effort across the organization," Arriagada said.

He said the 2012 jump in costs was largely due to higher energy costs and lower ore grades.

"We have very concrete plans to improve this focus...this is an issue which has not only affected Codelco in recent years, but the [mining] industry as a whole," Arriagada said.

Earlier this week, Codelco announced it would cut more than 100 jobs at its head office in Santiago.

In its most recent results, for the nine months to September 30, Codelco posted total costs of 247.5 cents/lb, up from 205.6 cents/lb in 2011.

The company produces around 1.7 million mt/year of copper.

--Tom Azzopardi, newsdesk@platts.com --Edited by Lisa Miller, lisa_miller@platts.com