Quebrada Blanca

Quebrada Blanca (lit. "White Ravine") is an open-pit copper mine in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It lies in the Andes at an altitude of 4,400 meters above sea level, 15 km west of the copper mine of Collahuasi and about 240 km southeast of the port city of Iquique. Teck Resources owns 60% of the mine, Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. and Sumitomo Corporation own together 30% of it and state-owned Codelco owns 10%.

The first known mining at Quebrada Blanca occurred at some point between 1905 and 1930 when in connection to mining at Collahuasi local miners dug small galleries to extract copper ore. In the late 1950s the area was mapped by the mining company Chilex but no exploration drillings were done as other mineral deposits in Chile were being priorized for this by the company. In 1971 the deposit was nationalized and in 1982 the property was transferred from Codelco to ENAMI, both state-owned. The development of a modern mine in the deposit was put to tender by ENAMI and in August 1989 Compañía Minera Quebrada Blanca was formed with 38.25% of the shares owned by Cominco, 29.25% by Teck, 22.5% by Cominco Resources and 10% by ENAMI.

Modern Quebrada Blanca begun production in 1994 reaching a first peak in 2009 with 87,400 tons of copper produced that year. Then, from 2015 to 2022 production remained under 40,000 tons of copper per year rising to 64,300 tons of copper in 2023 and 207,800 tons of copper in 2024 becoming thus the 8th most productive copper mine in Chile.