FRANKE PROFESSIONALS VISIT TRES VALLES

The purpose of the visit was to learn about implementing sodium chloride medium into the leaching process, which is a project that is currently being carried out at Minera Tres Valles.

It was an opportunity for the guests to visualize the different areas required in forming such a project, ultimately covering metallurgical topics with the Research and Development team, as well as environmental, engineering and plant processes.

The Franke open pit mine, which belongs to the Polish group KGHM, is located in Taltal, Antofagasta region; and it currently produces more than 20,000 MT of copper cathodes per year. As salt leaching can potentially improve recovery rates, among other benefits, they decided to bring along an extensive team of professionals composed of their Deputy General Manager, Piotr Paradisz; Process Superintendent, Raúl Manríquez; Metallurgical Research Engineer, Jorge Pinto Vega; Environmental Engineer, Myriam Elmes; and Chemical Engineer, Priscilla Olmos.

Raúl Manríquez thanked Tres Valles for the opportunity by stating that “the entire Minera Tres Valles team had a good disposition; their supportive stance, as well as their desire to better plant processes, speak very well of them as professionals and also as a company.”

Furthermore, the Metallurgical Superintendent and leader of the salt leaching project at Tres Valles, Eduardo Hasan, highlighted that the work done is a very good model to follow “because although limited resources were used at first, the ingenuity and skill of the staff made it possible to become a benchmark in this technology, which has been proven by other mining companies showing interest in learning more from our experience. In addition to the Franke Mine, we have received visitors from Codelco’s Radomiro Tomic Mine and will soon welcome professionals from Pucobre and Teck’s Carmen de Andacollo Mine.