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Mines/Peru

Cuajone mine

Cuajone mine, Peru. Producing, open pit, mining copper, molybdenum, silver since 1976.

Why Cuajone is famous

Cuajone is an open-pit copper mine in the Moquegua region of southern Peru. Southern Copper has held an interest since 1954, with Cerro de Pasco, Newmont and Asarco among the earlier owners. Overburden removal began in 1970 and ore production in 1976. The concentrator can mill 90,000 t a day. In February 2022 protests blocked the railway between Cuajone and Ilo.1

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Cuajone today

Where copper is mined todayWhere molybdenum is mined todayWhere silver is mined todayMining in Peru

Where next

Places

Owned byCerro de PascoCerro de Pasco was one of the earlier owners of the Cuajone area.1

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperCuajone belongs to the porphyry copper family of deposits.2

Sources

  1. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 Southern Copper Corporation (SEC)
  2. 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)).