Our end client Bechtel built the original copper concentrator at Chile’s Los Pelambres Mine, located approximately 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Santiago, between 1996 and 1999. In 2001, we returned to add a pebble crusher, and followed that by installing additional conveying, grinding, and flotation equipment. Bechtel’s fourth Los Pelambres project, the Repower II expansion, increased the concentrator’s capacity by 20 percent from 132,000 metric tons per day to 159,000 metric tons per day. In early 2019, Bechtel began construction of the INCO MLP project at Los Pelambres, which was inaugurated in March 2024.

The project considered EPC direct hire for a concentrator plant expansion, a desalinated water plant and a water pipeline. Staffing reached nearly 8,000 people during its construction stage.

The concentrator expansion included the addition of a grinding line with a SAG mill and a ball mill, a flotation line and the expansion of the existing stockpile to increase throughput by 40,000 tonnes per day.

The project included a water system with a 106-gallon per second (400 liters per second) desalinated water production system, a 40-mile (65 kilometers) and 24-inch desalinated water transport system with one pumping station and the upgrade of an existing 32-inch reclaim water system.