The El Pachón project was first announced as a binational project under the Chile-Argentina mining integration treaty entered into by both countries in 1997.
The project is located in the Andes, 5km from the Chilean border, in the Argentine department of Calingasta, in San Juan province. The project has a total area of 26,430ha, of which 100ha corresponds to the future open-pit copper mine.
The El Pachón project has a large and promising deposit with measured and indicated resources of 724Mt, grading 0.65% copper and a projected throughput of 160t/d. El Pachón has an orebody capable of producing over 400,000t of copper-in-concentrate for the first five years of operation, and a life of mine of more than 20 years. The project is fully owned by Glencore through local subsidiary Proyecto Pachón S.A. Minera. It was announced in early 2015 that El Pachón will no longer be binational, and will operate and be developed only in Argentina.
The property is located in the Andes at an elevation of 3,600m, in the department of Calingasta, in Argentina’s San Juan province, 5km from the border with Chile, and just over the range from the operating Los Pelambres mine (Antofagasta Minerals).