Teck seeking infrastructure synergies with Anglo American in Chile

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canada’s largest diversified miner Teck Resources has entered into negotiations with fellow diversified miner Anglo American about the potential of building a shared port, in Chile, where both miners are considering expansions at neighbouring copper mines.

Teck is currently mulling an expansion of the Quebrada Blanca mine, in Chile, as is Anglo American for its neighbouring Collahuasi mine, which could result in two ports being built 5 km apart. “This is ridiculous. We’ve got to stop doing that as an industry, and so I’ve talked to [Anglo CEO] Mark Cutifani. Eventually, we will sort something out,” Teck CE Don Lindsay said during the British Columbia Association for Mineral Exploration Roundup conference, in Vancouver, on Monday.

"We need to optimise our resources and how we develop them. And we’re going to have to find synergies with partners and look at things differently than before,” Lindsay stated, adding that this is an approach that has successfully worked in the past in the Sudbury basin of Ontario and in South Africa. “As an industry, our mindset needs to change. If we want to reduce the footprint, this is the only way to go.”

One example is the partnership that Teck and Goldcorp entered into in 2015, when they combined their respective Relincho and El Morro projects, located about 40 km apart, in Chile, to form the NuevaUnión project (formerly called Project Corridor). This reduced the capital costs for each partner and will increase the project's mine life.

“All over the world there are clusters of orebodies, owned by different companies, which result in duplication of infrastructure,” he said.

Last week, Goldcorp CEO David Garofalo said the world's largest gold miners need to form partnerships to share the risks of developing large gold deposits.

Teck last year partnered with junior Nicola Mining to conduct an exploration programme on the historic Craigmont mine, near its own Highland Valley Copper operations, in Canada, to gather grade and other technical characteristics of the stockpiled material. Following technical studies, Teck will have the right to buy the stockpiled material to add as feedstock to the Highland Valley mill.

“This is an incredibly efficient form of capital deployment for us and our partner as it adds feed to our existing mill, at lower cost,” Lindsay continued. “We are not alone in this type of thinking as last year brownfield capital spending eclipsed greenfield expenditures.”