Compañía Minera Atacocha, S.A.A, better known as Atacocha (), is a
Peruvian mining company engaged in the exploration and exploitation of mine concessions.
It operates a treatment plant and a mining camp, which are located in the districts of
San Francisco de Asis de Yurusyacan and
Yanacancha,
province of Pasco. The company's activities include the production and sale of
lead,
zinc and
copper concentrates. In addition, the company is active in the electric power generation, and it owns two hydroelectric power plants: Marcopampa and Chaprin with an installed capacity of 6.6
megawatts.
Atacocha was bought in 2008 by the Brazilian conglomerate
Votorantim Group, which owns 70% of its interests. Until then, the enterprise was publicly listed in the
Lima Stock Exchange and was part of the
, the country's main index.
As of 2000, Atacocha had extracted 29 million
tonnes of
ore in more than 275 km of horizontal and vertical sites. With this, the company had produced 2.3 million megatons of
zinc concentrates, 1.7 million of
lead, and more than 100 million fine ounces of
silver.
History
The company was founded in 1936
and is headquartered in
Lima. It was established by Francisco José (Paco) Gallo y Díez de Escalada, a Spanish
hidalgo whose family had held jurisdictional lordship over the
Valley of Sedano in
Burgos, northern Spain. Descendant of a once-powerful family, they had held prominent religious and colonial posts, such as Juan López Gallo (1500-1571), Baron of
Male and governor of
Spanish Netherlands.
Valentín Davila Jalon, ''Los Burgaleses en las Órdenes Nobiliarias Españolas: Orden de Santiago - Expediente 3232'', p. 574
/ref> Gallo was born 1 February 1905 in Santander. As the youngest of 8 and educated in Bilbao and London, he was sent to Peru in 1923 by his father to liquidate a family company and return home following the failed attempts of the rest of his siblings. The company, "Casa Gallo" was an important yet declining commercial conglomerate that owned land and mines in the country. At his arrival, the astute 18-year-old saw business opportunity and successfully sold Casa Gallo in an effort to buy land in Cerro de Pasco, situated at more than 14,000 ft of altitude. On his return to Europe, he became a mining engineer and bought rights of mine exploitation, founding Compañía Minera Atacocha 6 February 1936 in Lima.[Martínez Riaza (2006). p. 199] The original company logo included a rooster as a direct reference to the founder's family name and coat of arms (Gallo is Spanish for rooster). Luis Gallo, a distant cousin of Paco who was prime minister of Peru, was a board member at Atacocha.
On 20 March 1936, the first Session of the Ordinary General Shareholders' Meeting was held. During the meeting, the Board of Directors that would be presided over by Mr. Gino Bianchini was appointed, and would be made up of Gerardo Diez, Alberto Quesada, Manuel B. Llosa and Oscar Díaz Dulanto, with the interim Management falling to the latter. On 20 April, Italian engineer Edgardo Portaro Mazzetti was appointed Manager of the company. Gallo occupied the chairmanship
The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...
of the company until 1973 when he renounced and moved to Madrid following the radical reforms of the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian general who served as the President of Peru after a successful coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency in 1968. Under his presidency, nationalism ...
.[Milla Batres (1958). V. 5] This was despite the original petition of his father to sell the declining family enterprise and return home.
See also
* Mineral industry of Peru
* Rio Tinto
*Glencore
Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. The current company was c ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Compania Minera Atacocha
Companies of Peru
Votorantim Group
Pasco Region