OHL is awarded a contract worth 16 million euros at El Teniente Mine, the largest underground copper deposit in the world

OHL has been awarded a contract at the largest underground copper deposit on our planet, El Teniente Mine, located at a distance of 120 kilometers from Santiago de Chile (Chile). 

The project has been awarded by the Corporación Nacional del Cobre (Codelco), considered the leading copper producer in the world, with a budget of approximately 20 million dollars (16 million euros). The contract includes the support service to be given to the operation and maintenance of the canal for the transport of slurry, tailings and industrial wastewater in the mine. Mining commenced at El Teniente in 1905, and the mine already has over 3,000 kilometers of underground drifts. 

Under this contract, OHL is set to introduce new R&D&I technologies designed to improve the efficiency of the service of the mine, using drones that will enable observation, monitoring and inspection with detailed information and control of all of the activities of the tailing canal. The scope of the work includes the efficient and timely ongoing maintenance, operational support and industrial washing of the equipment and installations in the various industrial wastewater, thickening and recirculation units, tailing process, hydrometallurgy process, support to maintenance service and Sewell process. 

This project is added to others performed previously by OHL for Codelco. The first contract was signed in 2012 to develop a copper ore processing plant in División Ministro Hales, in Antofagasta, worth 80 million euros, which included an EPC contract and the operation & maintenance of the system.  Following this, three more operation & maintenance contracts were awarded in the same mining division (mobile crushing plant and leaching) totaling 16 million euros.

In early 2017, Codelco awarded OHL the 145-million-euro contract for the expansion of the Talabre Dam in the Chilean city of Calama, in the region of Antofagasta. In the industrial sphere, OHL has performed the operation & maintenance of the rhyolite crushing plant in the Atacama Desert (Chile) for BHP Billiton. 

Present in Chile since 1981

The OHL Group, with a presence in Chile since 1981, has performed outstanding projects in this country in the field of infrastructure. Significant examples include the Eastern Amérigo Vespucio toll road; the construction and operation of Terminal 2 in the Port of Valparaíso; the Industrial Bridge road concession; the work on Route 60 (Section 2, Sector 1, Panquehue Bypass) and on Line 3 of the Santiago de Chile Metro –sections 5 and 6–; the Camino Nogales-Puchuncaví concession and the construction of the Gustavo Fricke and Curicó Hospitals. Likewise, OHL Servicios has entered the Chilean facilities management market with the award of several projects in the area of cleaning & maintenance.