Escondida Copper Production Will Decline Up to 10% on Ore Grades, BHP Says

Copper production at Escondida, the world’s largest mine for the metal, will fall as much as 10 percenmanufacturers of nickel extraction equipments from orest by the middle of next year because of lower ore grades, said controlling owner BHP Billiton Ltd. Output will slide at least 5 percent in the current fiscal year through June 2011, the Melbourne-based company said today, maintaining last month’s forecast.

BHP owns a 57.5 percent stake in the Chilean mine. A scarcity of copper concentrate, the raw material for producing metal, will persist for “the foreseeable future,” Antofagasta Plc, which owns three Chilean mines, said yesterday. The shortfall forced smelters to lower processing fees charged to miners to ensure supply. Escondida produced 1.1 million metric tons of copper in total in 2009, down 12 percent on the year, according to figures on its website. That includes both concentrate and copper cathodes, or plates of finished metal.