Lundin Mining’s Caserones copper cut: weather risk and cost impacts for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Lundin Mining has cut 2026 copper guidance at its high‑altitude Caserones mine in Chile’s Atacama region to 120,000–130,000 tonnes, from 130,000–140,000 tonnes, after a second severe winter storm caused fresh power outages and infrastructure damage. The storm on 13–14 August brought heavy rain, strong winds and unusually heavy snow that damaged an already compromised transmission tower, extending downtime that began with a 12‑day outage in July and blocking access routes. Consolidated copper guidance is now 300,000–325,000 tonnes, with Caserones cash costs raised to $2.15–$2.35/lb and group costs to $1.95–$2.15/lb, underlining weather‑driven availability risk for Andean operations.
Technical Brief
- A transmission tower already weakened by the July storm was further damaged by high winds and heavy snowfall.
- Site teams are concurrently restoring power, repairing mine and plant infrastructure, and progressively reopening access routes under winter conditions.
- Management explicitly framed the restart as contingent on “safely returning Caserones to full production”, indicating a safety‑first ramp‑up.
- The August event combined heavy rain at lower elevations with unusually heavy snow and strong winds in the high Andes, stressing multi-elevation infrastructure.
- For other high-altitude Chilean mines, back‑to‑back storm events underline the need for redundancy in power supply corridors and all‑weather access design.
Our Take
Storm-driven power instability at Caserones in Chile’s arid north echoes other Chile power-infrastructure pieces in our database, including BHP’s planned sale of transmission assets feeding Escondida and Spence, suggesting grid resilience is becoming a material operational risk factor for copper producers in the Atacama.
Lundin Mining’s revised consolidated cash cost range of $1.95–$2.15/lb keeps it in the mid-cost bracket among copper names frequently appearing in our coverage (BHP, Antofagasta, First Quantum), meaning repeated weather outages at Caserones could erode competitive room against lower-disruption assets elsewhere in Latin America.
The mention of McEwen Copper’s $4 billion financing need for the Los Azules project, combined with Argentina’s recent Glacier Law reform that also involves Lundin Mining and Rio Tinto, signals that Andean copper growth options are increasingly tied to both high-altitude climate exposure and evolving environmental permitting regimes on the Argentine side of the range.
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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