MINING MINISTER BALDO PROKURICA HIGHLIGHTED MINERA TRES VALLES’ DEVELOPMENT
OF NEW OPERATIONAL PROJECTS
The visit is part of the announcement of the Company’s operational reactivation, which consists of starting work in its Papomono Masivo underground project as well as reopening its Don Gabriel open pit mine.
The Minister of Mining, Baldo Prokurica, accompanied by the CEO of Minera Tres Valles, Luis Vega Muñoz, took a tour of the various site operational areas. In this opportunity, the Secretary of State learned about the structural projects that the Company has been developing to achieve the consolidation of its production.
The construction of Papomono Masivo is one of its consolidation and improvements in production projects, which seeks to implement an inclined block caving exploitation method, an innovative procedure within medium-scale mining operations nationwide that will optimize the Company’s underground mining operation.
Along with this project, Minera Tres Valles plans to reopen its Don Gabriel open pit mine which was temporarily halted at the beginning of this year as a result of the pandemic and low copper prices.
Regarding his visit, Minister Prokurica highlighted the “great effort that Minera Tres Valles has made to keep up with not only its own activity, but also the purchase of ore from small miners. Reviving this process that went through a dificult time when the copper price fell, and that today the Company has reoriented, generating new partners, and through a special effort is restarting to rehire labor.”
Along these lines, he added that “this is good news for the country and for the Coquimbo Region, that this company is doing well, which hires local labor and shows a great commitment toward the surrounding communities. Mining once again gives Chilean families an opportunity, especially in the post-pandemic period.”
While the CEO of Minera Tres Valles, Luis Vega Muñoz, thanked the Minister of Mining and the other regional authorities for their visit to the site, he took the opportunity to comment on the new phase the Company is entering into by saying, “we have just closed a reorganization agreement where the Company has restructured its debt with national suppliers, allowing us to execute our current structural projects. We are very close to starting developments at the Papomono underground mine. Our goal is to restart operations at the Don Gabriel mine next year; by doing so, we will eventually achieve nominal capacity at the crushing plant with the production from the two deposits.”
During the site tour, the Minister was accompanied by the Mayor of the Coquimbo region, Lucía Pinto, the Regional Mining Secretary, Roberto Vega, and other members of the executive and managerial staff of Minera Tres Valles, Rafael Pérez de Arce, Jorge Baraqui, Sebastián Cortés and Eduardo Reyes.
Awarding of Funds – PAMMA 2020
The activity closed with a symbolic ceremony awarding funds for 2020 to the Coquimbo region’s Training and Technology Transfer Program for ‘Small Artisanal Mining’ (‘PAMMA’ for its Spanish acronym).
With representatives present from the various mining groups and unions in the province of Choapa, Minister Prokurica symbolically awarded CLP$ 551,701,151 to finance the 121 individual projects assigned for this period.