Investment program of Grupo Mexico for this decade exceeds 15 billion dollars including investments in the Buenavista Zinc, Pilares, El Pilar and El Arco projects in Mexico and Tia Maria, Los Chancas and Michiquillay in Peru.
This investment plan also includes various infrastructure investments, such as those aimed at boosting the competitiveness of the El Arco project.
Grupo Mexico
To begin with, the Buenavista Zinc project, in Sonora, Mexico, is located in Cananea, within the Buenavista deposit, where a new concentrator has been built.
This facility has a production capacity of 100,000 tons of zinc and 20,000 tons of copper per year.
By 2024, 54,000 tons of zinc and 11,000 tons of copper will be produced there and, once the ramp-up is completed, this facility will double the zinc production capacity and provide more than 2,000 jobs.
The capital budget for the project is US$439 million, most of which has already been invested.
Pilares
The Pilares project is located in Sonora, 6 km away from the La Caridad mine and consists of an open pit mine with an annual production capacity of 35,000 tons of copper in concentrate.
This project will significantly improve the average ore grade (combining the 0.78% expected from Pilares with the 0.29% from La Caridad).
The investment budget is US$176 million, of which US$145 million has already been invested.
Tia Maria
The Tia Maria project is located in Arequipa, Peru, and will use state-of-the-art SX/EW plant technology with the highest international environmental standards to produce 120,000 tons of SX/EW copper cathode per year.
The estimated capital budget for the project is US$1.4 billion.
Los Chancas
This expansion project located in Apurimac, Peru, is a porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit.
It currently has an estimated indicated copper mineral resource of 98 million tons of oxides with a copper content of 0.45% and 52 million tons of sulfides with a copper content of 0.59 percent.
The company plans to develop an open pit mine with both concentrator and leaching plant operations to produce 130,000 tons of copper and 7,500 tons of molybdenum per year.
Grupo Mexico‘s investment is an estimated US$2.6 billion and the project is expected to start operations during 2030.
Michiquillay
In 2018, a contract was signed for the acquisition of this project in Cajamarca, Peru.
As part of Grupo Mexico’s investment projects, Michiquillay is a world-class mining project with mineral resources of 2,288 million tons and a copper grade of 0.43 percent.
Michiquillay is expected to produce 225,000 tons of copper per year (along with molybdenum, gold and silver by-products) with an initial mine life of more than 25 years and at a competitive mining cost.
The company estimates that an investment of approximately US$2.5 billion will be required and production is expected to begin in 2032.