The Candelaria mine is a large open pit and underground copper-gold mine located in northern Chile in the Atacama Region. Candelaria has Proven and Probable Reserves of 676 million tonnes of ore grading 0.53% copper, 0.13 g/t gold, and 1.79 g/t silver; containing 3.58 million tonnes of copper, 3.0 million oz of gold and 39 million oz of silver.[2] The mine project incorporates a reverse osmosis plant at the port of Caldera, commissioned in 2013, with a capacity to produce 500 litres per second of desalinated industrial water, piping it 115 km from the Pacific Ocean to the minesite.[3][4]
The project was operated since discovery in 1987 by Phelps Dodge Corporation, which was taken over by Freeport-McMoRan in 2007. Lundin Mining bought out Freeport's 80% stake in 2014.[5]