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    Antofagasta PLC copper growth: autonomy at Centinela and lessons for mine planners

    March 27, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Antofagasta PLC copper growth: autonomy at Centinela and lessons for mine planners

    First reported on International Mining – News

    30 Second Briefing

    Antofagasta PLC is tying copper growth to innovation, reporting in its FY2025 results that fleet autonomy has been deployed at the Centinela mine since 2021 and is now central to scaling operations. The company frames autonomy as a way to manage increasingly complex open-pit operations, with larger truck fleets and more intricate dispatch requirements driving demand for digital control. For mine planners and operations teams, this signals continued investment in autonomous haulage, data-driven fleet management and process optimisation across Antofagasta’s Chilean assets.

    Technical Brief

    • Antofagasta links “innovation” directly to growth optionality in its FY2025 results presentation.
    • Management explicitly positions technology deployment as a lever to increase operating scale across its copper portfolio.
    • Innovation is framed as necessary to handle more complex mine management rather than as a standalone initiative.
    • Centinela is used as the reference site to evidence group-wide technology roll-out capability.

    Our Take

    Antofagasta PLC’s Centinela autonomy rollout from 2021 positions it alongside operators like Boliden in our database that are using advanced fleets to keep copper units competitive as Macquarie now characterises the market as “overpriced” and “oversupplied”.

    With Antofagasta’s CEO Iván Arriagada also a confirmed keynote for the World Mining Congress 2026, the Centinela automation experience is likely to be held up as a reference case for how large copper producers are using technology to defend margins into their 2025 results cycle.

    Copper is one of the most heavily covered commodities in our mining corpus, and the combination of price volatility and visible stock overhang highlighted in the Macquarie Strategy piece suggests that productivity gains at assets like Centinela may be more valuable than pure volume growth over the medium term.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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