Codelco

CODELCO (Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile or, in English, the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is the Chilean state owned copper mining company. Formed in 1976 from the foreign owned copper companies that were nationalised in 1971.

The headquarters are in Santiago and the seven-man board of directors is appointed by the President of the Republic. It has the Minister of Mining as its president and six other members including the Minister of Finance and one representative each from the Copper Workers Federation and the National Association of Copper Supervisors.

It is currently the largest copper producing company in the world and produced 1.66 million tonnes of the metal in 2007, 11% of the world total. It owns the world's largest known copper reserves and resources. At the end of 2007 it had a total of reserves and resources of 118 million tonnes of copper in its mining plan, sufficient to ensure more than 70 years of operations at current production levels. It also has additional identified resources of 208 million tonnes of copper, though one cannot say how much of this may prove economic.

Codelco's principal product is cathode copper. It is one of the world's "foremost" molybdenum producers and produced 27,857 fine metric tons in 2007 and is a large producer of rhenium, of which Chile is the world's largest producer. It also produces small amounts of gold and silver from refinery anode slimes, the residue from electro refining of copper.