Executed by HighService Engineering and Construction for the client Antofagasta Minerals.
On January 31st, the last contract of HighService Engineering and Construction (HS) concluded with the Oxides Encuentro Project in the district of Centinela for the company Antofagasta Minerals, Chile’s main private mining group that concentrates its operations in the Antofagasta Region. 21 kilometers from the commune of Sierra Gorda.
The three most relevant activities of this project, which will use seawater without desalination, contemplated:
– Construction work: assembly of minor and major equipment, in addition to the normalization of the systems for the final delivery of the Plant to Operations.
– Pre Commissioning: tests of individual systems, adjustment of the plant, of individual equipment and by system, as well as tests of hydraulic lines, motors, valves and instruments.
– Start-up: tests with loading systems and resolution “in situ” of operational problems.
This project was implemented by HS, a subsidiary of HighService Corp, between March 2017 and January 2018, with a maximum staff of 156 direct and indirect workers, which totaled 198,069 hours.
Thanks to the Oxides Encuentro project, Centinela’s SX-EW plant will operate at full capacity (100,000 tons of copper per year), providing an average of 43,000 tons of copper cathodes annually for eight years, and thus counteracting the effects of depletion and fall in the ore grades that today extract from Sentinel Oxides.