Empresa Nacional de Minería (National Mining Enterprise) better known by its acronym ENAMI is a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

an state-owned mining company based in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...

. Its business involve purchasing

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

, primarily from small and medium-scale mining, processing it is and selling the processed product, usually

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

, in the international market. ENAMI has also its role in providing technical and financial assistance for mining in its target segment. Its board president is the Chilean minister of mining, who since August 2023 is Aurora Williams. ENAMI was created in 1960 by the merger of Caja de Crédito y Fomento Minero (CACREMI) and Empresa Nacional de Fundiciones. The company is aimed to help small-scale miners by among other things buying ore in quantities that are otherwise too small to be traded in the international market. The company also helps stabilizing prices for the products of medium and small-scale miners. It has most of its offices and smelters and other industries in the northern half och Chile, from

Rancagua Rancagua () is a city and commune in central Chile and part of the Rancagua conurbation. It is the capital of the Cachapoal Province and of the O'Higgins Region, located south of the national capital of Santiago. It was originally named Sa ...

to the

Arica Arica ( ; ) is a commune and a port city with a population of 222,619 in the Arica Province of northern Chile's Arica y Parinacota Region. It is Chile's northernmost city, being located only south of the border with Peru. The city is the ca ...

in the far north. South of Rancagua the only office of ENAMI lies in Concepción. Artisan miners known as ''

pirquinero In Chile and nearby areas of Argentina and Bolivia a () is a miner who extracts minerals in a traditional manner and is usually independent. A charactistic of the is that they are involved in a wide range of stages of the production including m ...

s'' usually sell their output directly to ENAMI. The number of small-scale miners in charge of a mining operation (each typically having a workforce of five to six miners), including pirquineros, registered at ENAMI has been in the span 2300 to 750 in the 2011–2021 period. Thus, by one estimate in the 2000s to the 2020s in years of high mining activity up to 14,000 miners would have been employed in small-scale mining in Chile. As of 2019 the number of small-scale miners working on copper mining was about twenty times larger than those working on other metals like gold or silver. ENAMI is considered a key component to fight

illegal mining in Chile Illegal mining is a concern in Chile. As of 2025 it was considered to be on the rise but still far below the levels of neighbouring countries like Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. In 2024 there were 20 formal complaints of illegal mining before t ...

as it deprives

organized crime Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a f ...

from taking the role of being the main buyers of the products of small-scale miners as it happens in other Latin American countries.

Assets

ENAMI owns 10% of the copper mine Carmen de Andacollo in which

Teck Resources Teck Resources Limited is a diversified natural resources company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is engaged in mining and mineral development, including coal for the steelmaking industry, copper, zinc, and energy. Secondary ...

owns the remaining 90% of the shares. The custom copper smelter Fundición Paipote next to

Copiapó Copiapó () is a List of cities in Chile, city and communes of Chile, commune in northern Chile, located about 65 kilometers east of the coastal List of towns in Chile, town of Caldera, Chile, Caldera. Founded on December 8, 1744, it is the capi ...

is owned ENAMI. It has been paralyzed since February 2024 for a major overhaul. At the time of paralyzation the smelter generated economic losses for ENAMI.

Former assets

In 2024 ENAMI sold its 10% shares in Quebrada Blanca to state-owned

Codelco The National Copper Corporation of Chile (), abbreviated as Codelco, is a Chilean state-owned mining company and the largest copper mining company in the world. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationalised in 1 ...

. Prior to the sale the 10% of shares of Quebrada Blanca were ENAMI's main asset, and its sale was aimed to capitalize the company and pay-off some of ENAMI's debts. The terms of the purchase were criticized by Sociedad Nacional de Minería as lacking transparency. Other critics also point out that shares were sold at prices below what private companies would have paid and that the sale is part of a pattern of empoverishment of ENAMI at the cost of benefitting Codelco. In late 1977 ENAMI sold Los Bronces mine, then known as ''Disputada'', to

Exxon Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...

for 93 million US$. Exxon later sold the mine to

Anglo American plc Anglo American plc is a British Multinational corporation, multinational mining company with headquarters in London, England. It is the world's largest producer of platinum, with around 40% of world output, as well as being a major producer of ...

for 1300 million US$. ENAMI owned the copper smelter Fundición Ventanas in

Valparaíso Region The Valparaíso Region (, ) is one of Chile's 16 Regions of Chile, first order administrative divisions.Valparaíso Region, 2006 With the country's second-highest population of 1,790,219 , and fourth-smallest area of , the region is Chile's sec ...

from its establishment in 1964 to 2005 when it was sold to

. This smelter closed in 2023 due to

environmental issues Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recov ...

References

Bibliography

*{{cite book, last1=Ulloa Urrutia, first1=Alfie, last2=Contreras Biekert, first2=José Luis, last3=Gana Aravena, first3=Joaquín, last4=Miranda Toledo , first4=Rodrigo, last5=Chauveau Gerber, first5=Paul, first6=Fernando, last6=Villalobos Valenzuela, last7=Farías Soto, first7=Javiera, title=Productividad en la Gran Minería del Cobre, chapter=, year=2017 , pages= , publisher=Comisión Nacional de Productividad, language=Spanish, isbn=978-956-7725-08-3 Mining companies of Chile Companies based in Santiago, Chile Government-owned companies of Chile Non-renewable resource companies established in 1960 Chilean companies established in 1960 ENAMI