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Mines/Indonesia

Grasberg minerals district

Grasberg minerals district, Indonesia. Producing, open pit and underground, mining copper, gold, silver since 1972.

Why Grasberg minerals district is famous

Grasberg minerals district in Papua, Indonesia, is one of the largest copper and gold producers. In 2025 it produced 1,015 million lb of copper and 937 koz of gold (100% basis). That was lower than 2024 (1,800 million lb; 1,861 koz) after the September 2025 mud rush. Freeport and its predecessors have operated in the area since 1967. The Ertsberg outcrop was first reached by the 1936 Cartenz expedition, and Freeport's Forbes Wilson and Del Flint went back to it in 1960. Mining production began in 1972. The Grasberg deposit was found in 1988. Open-pit mining ran from 1990 to 2019 and made over 27 billion lb of copper and 46 Moz of gold. Block-cave mining began in 2019.1,2,3,4

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Porphyry copper

Grasberg minerals district today

Where copper is mined todayWhere gold is mined todayWhere silver is mined todayMining in Indonesia

Where next

People

Discovered byJean Jacques DozyA Dutch geologist wrote up the copper mountain in 1936.5

Places

Located inTembagapuraGrasberg minerals district is about 10 km from Tembagapura.1

Deposit types

An example ofPorphyry copperGrasberg minerals district belongs to the porphyry copper family of deposits.6

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. Our history PT Freeport Indonesia
  4. Technical report summary, Grasberg minerals district (PT Freeport Indonesia) Freeport-McMoRan (SEC exhibit to Form 10-K for 2021)
  5. West Irian Copper Project OneMine
  6. 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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Pictures: Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Escondida Mine, Chile, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Timna in de Negevwoestijn; rotspartij "de zuilen van Salomo", Poll, Willem van de / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).