Santiago (Platts)--22Nov2012/1056 am EST/1556 GMT
Chile's Codelco, the world's largest producer of copper, expects to produce slightly less than the 1.7 million mt of the metal previously forecast for 2012, as the state-owned mining firm faces difficult mining conditions at its aging operations, CEO Thomas Keller said Thursday. It is basically in line with what we forecast at the start of year, the executive told journalists in Santiago. Production during the first nine months of the year fell 5% to 1.189 million mt, the company said in its latest quarterly results. Keller said that ore grades at its century-old Chuquicamata mine had fallen 16% to 0.78% compared to a year ago, cutting production to Sep 30 at the mine by 77,000 mt to 249,000 mt. But the executive attributed the lower than expected production to geotechnical issues which have delayed access to areas of higher grade ores, noting that the open pit is reaching the end of its useful life. Codelco is planning to invest around $3 billion to convert Chuquicamata into a major underground operation by the end of the decade. --Tom Azzopardi, newsdesk@platts.com--Edited by James Leech, james_leech@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Metals Daily. http://www.platts.com/Products/metalsdaily