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MMG reported Monday that it will have to halt production at its Las Bambas copper mine in Peru until February 20, following a new and ongoing blockade of the road used by the company, which has already forced the Chinese miner to curtail operations.
Residents of Chumbivilcas province have been blocking the main access to Las Bambas since November 20. Communities along the road have demanded more logistical transportation contracts, financial compensation for the land used to build the mining road, and actions to reduce the alleged damage to their crops caused by the large number of trucks on the road every day.
The new protest takes place less than a month after the lifting of the one-month blockade that forced the giant copper mine to close from December 18 to 31, when it was able to restart after a series of negotiations.
Las Bambas, Peru’s fourth-largest copper mine and the ninth-largest in the world, has been grappling with protests and roadblocks since 2015-16.
Mine operations were disrupted for more than 100 days in 2019, with 70 communities along the 450 km (280 miles) road to the port of Matarani demanding action from MMG and the national government on truck emissions and a reduction in their farmland.
A three-week roadblock protest staged in late 2020 prevented MMG from exporting 189,000 tons of copper concentrate worth $530 million from the mine.
Further disruptions in September last year forced the company to halt operations for several days. MMG agreed in early October to integrate communities into its value chain, even though they are not within the resource’s area of influence.
Overall, operations in Las Bambas have been shut down for more than 400 days since 2016, according to company estimates.
With a production capacity of 400,000 tons of copper per year (and significant amounts of gold and silver) or about 2% of total global primary production, it produced 339,682 tons of the red metal and 249,767 tons of zinc in 2021.
The mine employs more than 6,000 direct and indirect workers, 25% of whom are residents of the Apurímac region.
