SMM, September 11:
According to Panama's Minister of Commerce and Industries Julio Moltó during a budget committee hearing in the National Assembly, Cobre Panamá plans to ship approximately 38,000 mt of copper concentrates on September 11 local time, destined for India. This will be the mine's second batch of copper concentrates produced from stockpiled ore mined before the shutdown in 2026. The buyer has been confirmed, but its name has not been disclosed, and the export permit application has been submitted.
Previously, Cobre Panamá completed its first shipment of approximately 33,000 mt of copper concentrates from August 18 to 22, with cargoes sent to Spain and Bulgaria. Moltó stated that in 2025, the Panamanian government approved a total of four shipments of copper concentrates from Cobre Panamá, totaling approximately 124,300 mt. Cobre Panamá officially disclosed
that as of now, Cobre Panamá has processed approximately 6.3 million mt of raw ore stockpiled before the shutdown, completing about 16% of the planned total, with approximately 31.6 million mt remaining to be processed. At the current pace, it is expected to take about 13 more months. First Quantum previously estimated that the mine has approximately 38 million mt of stockpiled raw ore, with an estimated recoverable copper metal content of approximately 70,000 mt.
Cobre Panamá has suspended mining since 2023, when Panama's Supreme Court ruled Law 406 unconstitutional. The Panamanian government officially authorized the company on April 7, 2026 to process and export the already-mined stockpiled ore. The related operations do not include drilling, blasting, or new mining activities, and therefore should not be considered a production resumption at the mine. In the short term, processing of stockpiled ore will provide a small, phased supplement to the global copper concentrates market, but its effect on easing the tight supply situation in global copper concentrates remains limited.
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