Video Description
Toquepala - Villa Staff and Plaza.
Source: Otatterwal
Toquepala Mine
Toquepala is an open-pit copper mine located in southern Peru, 30 kilometers from Cuajone
and 870 kilometers from Lima. The concentrator has a milling capacity of
60,000 tons per day. The SX/EW facility has a production capacity of 56,000
tons per year of LME grade A copper cathodes. Overburden removal commenced
in 1957 and ore production commenced in 1960. Toquepala operations utilize a conventional open-pit mining method to collect copper ore for further processing in
the concentrator. Source:
SoutherPeru.com
Copper mining in southwestern was carried on sporadically since the end of
the 19th century, and there are brief references in geographical literature
of the time to copper occurrences in the general area of Toquepala and
Cuajone. Narrow oxide and enriched sulfide veinlets were exploited on a very
limited scale, but the desert nature and difficult accessibility of the area
discouraged continued mining activities. Soon after the settlement of the
border conflict between Peru and Chile in 1929, interest was renewed in the
are and local residents started staking out mining claims. Prominent among
these were Juan Oviedo Villegas (Toquepala) and Julio E. Gianella (Cuajone).
Source: Daniel Rodriguez Hoyle in Surface mining by Bruce A. Kennedy,
editor.
Toquepala is a porphyry copper deposit in the southern sierra, inland from
the port of llo. It is worked as an open pit. Its existence was known for
quite some years; a famous traveler of the nineteenth century, Raimondi,
mentioned it.
Toquepala Interactive Satellite Map
Explore Toquepala copper mine, Toquepala city,
Villa Staff, Plaza, Ilabaya, Tacna, Peru. Click
a placemark. To Pan: click and drag
or take advantage of the pan and zoom bars.
