Escondida

Escondida is a vast copper operation high in Chile's Atacama Desert, roughly 170 km southeast of Antofagasta, majority-owned and run by BHP alongside Rio Tinto and other partners. Producing well over a million tonnes of copper a year, it has stood as the single biggest copper-producing mine on the planet since it opened in the early 1990s. The site combines open-pit extraction, concentrators and heap-leach processing, and has moved its water supply to a coastal desalination plant to reduce pressure on local groundwater.