SMM7, June 7: free port (Freeport-McMoRan) announced on Monday that it had exceeded its plan to meet several key performance indicators in its revised operation plan in April. Copper sales are expected to increase by 8% in the second quarter than expected (690 million pounds), gold sales are expected to increase by 10% than expected (165000 ounces), and EBITDA is expected to be about $650 million in the second quarter of this year.

The Lone Star project in Arizona has been largely completed and is expected to start producing about 200m pounds of copper a year from the second half of 2020, Freeport said.

The company said the, Cerro Verde copper mine had made significant progress in resuming operations after the Peruvian government imposed covid-19 restrictions. Average daily ore production at the, Cerro Verde mine in June was 315000 tonnes, about 80 per cent of the 2019 average. At the same time, Freeport continues to operate its open-pit copper mine El Abra in Chile.

Freeport is planning to gradually resume underground production at the world's second-largest copper mine after cutting its workforce at the Grasberg mine in May due to a surge in covid-19 cases.

The company said total daily production at the, Grasberg Block Cave and Deep MLZ underground mines exceeded 54000 tonnes in the second quarter, about 9 per cent higher than expected in April 2020 and 46 per cent higher than the average in the first quarter of 2020. By the end of June, the combined production of, Grasberg Block Cave and DMLZ averaged about 70, 000 tons of ore per day.

(PT Freeport Indonesia), the Indonesian arm of Freeport, expects copper and gold production to be close to 1.4 billion pounds and 1.4 million ounces in 2021, almost double the level expected in 2020.

"Click to participate in the second China (Yingtan) Copper Industry Summit Forum and the 15th China International Copper Industry chain Summit"

Scan the code to sign up for the summit or apply to join the SMM industry exchange group: