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    The copper the world needs above ground: tailings reprocessing lens for mine planners

    July 7, 2026|

    Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

    The copper the world needs above ground: tailings reprocessing lens for mine planners

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Copper tailings reprocessing is framed as a near‑term supply solution, with S&P Global projecting demand rising from 28 million tonnes in 2025 to 42 million tonnes by 2040 while new copper mines take an average 17.9 years to reach production and are expected to meet only about 70% of 2035 demand. Andrew Dennan, CEO of Halo Minerals, points to advances in flotation, leaching and fine‑particle recovery and to projects such as Halo’s Playa Verde in Chile, where 250 million tonnes of historic Potrerillos and El Salvador tailings at Chañaral could be reworked. With an estimated 282 billion tonnes of tailings globally, he argues that above‑ground material, already blasted and crushed, can be rapidly mobilised using existing infrastructure while also remediating legacy arsenic‑rich pollution.

    Technical Brief

    • BHP forecasts copper use in data centres increasing sixfold by 2050, heavily driven by AI workloads.
    • A single hyperscale AI data centre can require up to 50,000 tonnes of copper cabling and equipment.
    • Conventional data centres typically use only 5,000–15,000 tonnes of copper, underscoring the AI step-change in intensity.
    • Potrerillos and El Salvador mines discharged ~250 million tonnes of tailings into the Salado River between 1938–1978.
    • Those tailings formed the current Chañaral beach deposit, now targeted by Halo Minerals’ Playa Verde project.
    • The UN has labelled the Chañaral coastal area as one of the Pacific’s most serious pollution cases.
    • Globally, an estimated 282 billion tonnes of mine tailings exist, representing a large above‑ground copper inventory.

    Our Take

    BHP’s role in this copper narrative aligns with several recent items in our database where it is trialling waste‑stream recovery technologies with SiTration and BHP Invent, signalling that majors are already testing pathways to treat tailings and low‑grade material as a strategic copper source rather than a liability.

    The focus on Chilean sites such as Potrerillos, El Salvador and the Salado River dovetails with BHP’s current push to secure a new 20‑year life at Cerro Colorado in Chile, suggesting that future permitting there is likely to be judged against legacy tailings impacts and the credibility of re‑mining or remediation plans.

    With S&P Global’s estimate that only 70% of copper demand will be met by existing and planned mines by 2035 and an average 17.9‑year development time for new projects, assets like Halo Minerals’ Playa Verde and South32’s Arizona zinc–manganese project are positioned in a window where tailings reprocessing and secondary recovery could become bankable faster than many greenfield copper mines.

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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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