On July 7, MMG Limited, a company under China Minmetals Corporation, announced that the Peru-based Las Bambas Copper Mine (“Las Bambas”) was put into commercial production on July 1 as scheduled, marking another important milestone of the project; meanwhile, in terms of financial treatment, the relevant expenditures were recognized as expenses instead of capital costs. Currently, the project has entered the phase of stable operation, and the processing capacity has reached the design capacity.

Since the project was put into operation early this year, steady progress has been made in all work on schedule, thanks to the great support from the shareholders and partners and the painstaking efforts of the MMG team: a rated mining capacity of over 400,000 tons/day, full operation of the primary crushing station, full capacity of 8,000 tons per hour of the ground conveyor, operation of two production lines in the copper processing plant, which have gradually reached the design capacity, completion and commissioning of the molybdenum processing plant; progress in the tailings dam as expected, full operation of the tailings discharge and water circulation system; loading of the concentrate in Berth Facilities F newly built in Matarani, and smooth arrival of the first shipment of copper concentrate in China in late March; production of a total of 31,470 tons of copper concentrate as of the first quarter of 2016.

The commercial production of the project on schedule marks an important step in Minmetals efforts to become Asia's largest and one of the world's top ten copper producers. This not only can help Minmetals to enhance its right to speak in the global metal market, but also will significantly enhance China’s capabilities of strategic support for copper resources. It is expected that the project will produce copper concentrate containing 250,000-300,000 tons of copper in 2016. With steady processing production, copper concentrate will be produced at an expected cash cost of USD 0.8-0.9/lb, which is in the first quadrant of the cost curve.