Franke is an open pit copper mine located in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...

of northern

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 ...

. More precisely it lies about 75 km sotuheast of the port of

Taltal Taltal is a Chilean commune and city in Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta Region. According to the 2012 census, the commune has a population of 11,132 and has an area of . The commune is home to Paranal Observatory and includes the northern po ...

at an altitude of about 1,730 meters above sea level in southernmost

Antofagasta Region The Antofagasta Region (, ) is one of Chile's Administrative divisions of Chile, sixteen first-order administrative divisions. Being the second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta, El ...

. It is owned and operated by Grupo Minero Las Cenizas, a medium-scale Chilean mining company, since 2022 when

KGHM Polska Miedź KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. (Kombinat Górniczo-Hutniczy Miedzi), commonly known as KGHM (Polish pronunciation: ), is a Polish multinational mining corporation headquartered in Lubin, Lower Silesia, Poland. Founded in 1961 as a state enterprise, th ...

sold it. Grupo Minero Las Cenizas declares to process a montly average of 334,000 tons of ore with average

grades Grade most commonly refers to: * Grading in education, a measurement of a student's performance by educational assessment (e.g. A, pass, etc.) * A designation for students, classes and curricula indicating the number of the year a student has reach ...

of 0.65% copper at Franke mine. In the 20th century, and prior to the establishment of the modern mine, the mine site was exploited by 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''.

References

Copper mines in Chile Mines in Antofagasta Region Open-pit mines Surface mines in Chile {{antofagasta-geo-stub