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Mines/Peru

Cerro Verde

Cerro Verde, Peru. Producing, open pit, mining copper, molybdenum.

Why Cerro Verde is famous

Large open-pit copper and molybdenum mine near Arequipa, Peru. In operation since the 1970s and bought in 1994 from the Peruvian government by a Phelps Dodge predecessor. 2025 output was 863 million lb of copper and 21 million lb of molybdenum (100% basis).1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Cerro Verde today

Where copper is mined todayWhere molybdenum is mined todayMining in Peru

Where next

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperCerro Verde belongs to the porphyry copper family of deposits.3

Sources

  1. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 Freeport-McMoRan Inc (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Ball mills and SAG mills by photosmith2011, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0; Froth flotation and tailings by Nina111955, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Escondida Mine, Chile, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).