Good mornin g, everyone. Thank you, Alejandro, for bringing out the good weather for us, which was important for our visit in Coloso today, as I think you'll all get to experience. Thank you for joining us today for the 2024 SAR Tour here in Chile. We know you're pretty busy. This is not the easiest place to always get to, so to have such a good turnout for this visit is tremendous.
So thank you for being here with us. I didn't get a chance last night to actually get out and meet all of you. For those of you who I didn't have a chance to meet last night, my name is Brandon Craig. I'm the President of Minerals Americas. I would describe myself as a long-serving BHP employee. I've been with the business for 25 years.
I started in this role in the Americas on the 1st of March, but prior to this role, I was running our iron ore business, and before that, running our coal business in various operating roles. So I've been with the company a long time. I would probably describe myself as very much an operator. I'm very proud to lead a very good team here in the Americas.
You're certainly going to have an opportunity to meet most of them over the next few days, and I think that will give you a much fuller impression of who we are and what we do here in the Americas, which I'm looking forward to. I'd like to just very briefly point your attention to the disclaimer we're just going to put on the screen. This is pretty standard. You should all be familiar with this before I get going. All right.
So first, I want to set the scene in terms of how Chile fits into the BHP world. As you know, BHP has a very simple and a very clear strategy. Our portfolio focuses on developing and operating large, long-life, low-cost assets and commodities that benefit from the megatrends playing out around us.
Our focus on operational excellence ensures that we unlock the maximum value from our assets and our capital and reliably deliver high operating margins. This combination delivers strong and consistent cash flows, and coupled with our strong balance sheet and the discipline embedded from both sequencing our projects and the Capital Allocation Framework, means we can fund our growth and deliver very attractive returns to our shareholders, who are most of you.
Creating broader social value is also extremely important to our business. This positions us as the partner of choice and goes hand in hand with long-term shareholder value creation, and we are going to touch on each of these areas over the next few days. We are focused on Chile today, but before we dive into our assets in detail, I want to take some time to speak about the wider Minerals Americas' portfolio.
As you can see, these span North and South America with operations and projects in over seven countries. They comprise copper, potash, and iron ore assets, all commodities for BHP, all core commodities for BHP. It includes producing assets, development, and exploration projects, both operated and non-operated. The Americas is becoming an increasingly important part of BHP's business, underpinned by our investments in very high-quality assets.
While our Chilean assets, Escondida and Pampa Norte, form the backbone of our copper business, we also have other attractive copper assets in our region. For example, we have Antamina, which is the world's fifth largest copper mine. It sits right at the bottom of the cost curve and has significant life still ahead of it.
We have Resolution in the U.S., which offers significant long-term copper growth optionality, and the recent Filo and Josemaria transaction with Lundin Mining, which, when that transaction is completed, secures our position in what we consider to be one of the most significant global discoveries in recent decades. In terms of our other commodities, we have Jansen up in Canada, which is set to become a very low-cost major potash producer when it starts production in only two years from today.
Jansen itself also has very significant long-term growth optionality and what I would describe as an enviable resource position in Canada. Finally, Samarco, which produces high-quality iron ore pellets that are currently in strong demand. Now, this business is set to double production through the restart of a second concentrator very early in the new year.
In terms of Chile, BHP has been operating in this area for over 30 years. Today, Escondida and Spence account for close to 27% of Chilean copper production and contribute significantly to the economy. This production forms a significant portion of the 5 million tons of concentrate that BHP markets each year.
In financial year 2024, our assets contributed $9.4 billion, and that is almost 3% of Chilean GDP, to the government in the form of royalties and taxation to communities via social investments and through our suppliers, and of course, through our workforce. Across our Chilean operations, we have a workforce of 16,000 people, including 6,000 permanent employees, 42% of whom are female, and that is about 3× the average of the Chilean mining industry and something that we are particularly proud of in this region.
W e are an industry leader when it comes to the sustainability of our operations, building the first desalination plant in Latin America and being one of the first mining companies in Chile to source 100% of our electricity requirements from renewable sources.
But before I expand on our great assets, let me start with the single most important priority which we have, which of course is safety. In Chile, as is the case throughout BHP, we integrate safety into how we work every day through our culture, leadership systems, and processes. Our BHP Operating System focuses on empowering our people to enable continuous improvement every day, and our Field Leadership Program means our leaders spend more time with the frontline workforce to coach our teams, reinforce our standards, and verify risk controls.
This creates a positive workplace culture built on care and built on trust and enables us to understand more about the conditions in the operations that may increase risk to our workforce and influence how work is actually executed in the field.
Our fatality elimination program, which was established back in 2021, seeks to address key fatality risks at our operations, predominantly through leveraging technology and through the introduction of higher-order engineering controls. We have embraced these practices, and the results are clear, as you can see on the chart on the right. Our Total Recordable Injury Frequency is down 26% since 2019.
Our high potential injuries have decreased significantly, and we have had none of these events in financial year 2024, a nd most importantly, we have had no fatalities in this region in over eight years. Digging deeper into our assets, Escondida is the world's largest copper mine, and as you can see on the chart, 40% larger than Grasberg in Indonesia, which is the second largest. Spence is also high up the rankings in terms of size.
Cerro Colorado, the other asset in Pampa Norte, is currently in care and maintenance but has been a sizable producer over the last three decades and still has an underlying resource base of more than 2 billion tons. To date, these mines have produced 38 million tons of copper. That is around 7% of global mine supply over that period. Last year, they produced close to 1.4 million tons.
Our Chilean operations have also had significant impact on the BHP portfolio. Our focus on operational excellence, continuous improvement, and cost control has delivered very good results. On the left here, you can see that over the past 20 years, despite declining grades and inflation, our Chilean copper assets have delivered a consistently high EBITDA margin averaging 58%, and over the past five years, they have delivered a return on capital employed of more than 20%. These are pretty compelling numbers.
That's where we are today, but with 30 billion tons of copper resource remaining, it is very much about the future, and as we look ahead, we believe we have a number of competitive advantages to deliver the copper the world is going to need. Our world-class resource position and deep understanding of these ore bodies provide optionality for many decades to come.
Our focus on operational excellence means we deliver reliable performance, meeting guidance more consistently than our competitors, and allows us to maximize the value of our resource position and invested capital. These provide a strong platform from which to grow production across both new and existing facilities, and we have extensive experience in Chile.
Our well-established and trusted relationships with government, communities, suppliers, partners, and our workforce, as well as our leading approach to multiple aspects of sustainability and social value, positions us truly as a partner of choice. Over the next few days, you will hear much more about this, but let me unpack these areas just a little bit further.
As we look forward, our resource base provides numerous opportunities. As you can see on the chart, BHP has the largest contained copper resources globally, and almost half of that is in Chile. Our 30 billion tons of total copper resources in Chile could support almost seven years of global demand a nd this excludes our share of Filo, Josemaria , Antamina, and Resolution. The scale of our resources provides significant benefits. For example, our geological knowledge leads to lower technical risk and uncertainty.
It creates significant low-risk brownfield optionality and the ability to leverage installed infrastructure both at the mines but also across water and power. It is important to remember that one of the most valuable things we can do is to operate our assets exceptionally well and get the most out of what we already have, and we pursue this relentlessly by bringing together our people, systems, technology, and of course, through innovation.
Our performance-oriented culture enabled through the BHP Operating System creates an engaged and truly empowered workforce. Our global functional model and centers of excellence is how we establish deep technical capability and how we deploy improvement faster and at scale, and when combined with technology, we can accelerate improvements across our value chain and deliver safer, lower-cost, more reliable, and ultimately more productive operations.
This, of course, is an ongoing journey, and we are really seeing good results with increased productivity at our Chilean assets a nd you'll hear more about this over the next few days when you're on site and when you get to interact with the team. We have also been studying the optimal, most value-accretive way to unlock more from our resource and mitigate the effects of grade decline.
As you can see, we have narrowed our focus to four key pathways. These pathways involve both concentrator and leaching projects applied to existing facilities and, importantly, to new facilities. For example, within our concentrator strategy, we are looking at expansion and debottlenecking for Laguna Seca, as well as a new replacement concentrator for Los Colorados and concentrator upgrades at Spence.
For our leaching strategy, we are focused on applying both BHP and third-party technologies for primary sulfide leaching, utilizing latent capacity at Escondida, Spence, and at Cerro. In Chile, we have the potential to add around 200,000 tons per year of incremental copper production.
Since our results in August, where we first presented this chart, we have been working hard on the projects and tightening up these assumptions. These continue to have attractive returns at a program level and are now in the range of 15%-19% internal rates of return, improved from 14%-19% shared in August. Capital intensities also remain competitive and have improved from $17,000-$19,000 mentioned in August to $19,000-$26,000 per ton currently.
We will take a staged approach to sequencing and executing these projects, with some ready for final investment decisions in the next financial year and the balance expected between financial year 2027 and financial year 2029. We have options at both Escondida and Spence, and at Cerro, there's the potential to restart operations a little bit further down the line.
Of course, these projects will compete for capital against all other options within the BHP portfolio, including the copper options shown here at Antamina, Filo, Josemaria , Resolution, and importantly, at Copper South Australia.
Our investment process informs our disciplined allocation of capital, with sequencing of projects targeted to maximize value at the BHP group level. While the majority of BHP's growth spend is expected to go towards delivering growth in future-facing commodities, we do not take this for granted.
Our role in Minerals Americas is to ensure that these projects are the best they can be and sequenced appropriately so that they stack up against BHP's expanding portfolio of very attractive options. T his is across a range of metrics, not just returns, but other financial and non-financial metrics, which Fran will discuss shortly in her presentation. So not only are we growing, but we are doing so responsibly.
Our stakeholders, governments, community suppliers, our partners, and of course, our workforce value BHP's social value, actions, reputation, and mindset a nd we've been at the forefront of the sector's sustainability efforts for quite some time, as you can see on this slide. For example, we helped with the development of the Kelar Natural Gas Fired Power Plant located north of Antofagasta to supply into the Northern Interconnected System .
This plant provided security and stability and permitted an increase in the penetration of renewable energy sources into the market. Then in financial year 2017, we took the bold decision as a company in Chile to close coal contracts ahead of their maturity and move much faster into renewables. This positioned us ahead of the rest of industry and has produced significant reductions in energy cost.
We started a trend that really moved the needle here and has made Chile one of the leading countries for renewables in the world. Since 2022, we have had zero Scope 2 emissions. As you can see from this schematic, our next challenge is to displace diesel consumption while maintaining 100% renewable energy supply. Electrification is BHP's preferred pathway to eliminate diesel in our haul trucks, which account today for around 80% of our Chilean Scope 1 emissions.
But this will need further development and deployment of new technologies, collaboration across industry and academia, as well as field testing and further validation. We are approaching this in two stages. First, we will implement diesel electric trucks later this decade, and after this, in the next decade, we plan to transition from diesel electric to the next generation of battery electric haul trucks.
However, replacing diesel will require us to develop a whole new operational ecosystem to manage the fleet, and every part of the mine will be touched by this change. How we control our fleet, how we integrate a mix of static and dynamic charging, how electrification impacts mine design and planning, and most importantly, how we manage the risks will all be very important considerations. Over the next three days, we are going to deep dive into each of the areas I've just touched on.
Today, we will cover our view on copper as a commodity, the Chilean operating environment, our progress on social value, our financial performance, and of course, our growth program. We will also tour our port facilities and our desalination plant.
This afternoon, we are going to head off to Escondida and spend tomorrow touring the open pit, the Laguna Seca concentrator, the cathodes facility, and our leaching demonstration pad, and on Wednesday, we will travel to Spence, where we will see the open pit, the truck shop, the concentrator, and the tailings storage facility.
Laura, René, Fran, Adam, Pedro, Alejandro, and Christian are just a handful of our team that you are going to hear from over the next few days, all of whom have broad and significant experience in mining and minerals processing and in Chile. We think we have a really, really good story to tell here in Chile about our copper prospects. We have an awesome resource base as BHP.
We have a great team with a track record of delivering very strong results, and we think we, well, we believe we have an exciting development program ahead of us, which we believe is going to unlock significant value for BHP and for our shareholders, all of which, over the next few days, we're really excited to be sharing with you. With that, let me hand over to Laura, who is going to take you through our copper market view.
Thanks, Brandon. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Antofagasta. My name's Laura Whitton. I'm the head of commodity strategy for copper and potash here at BHP. I joined BHP in 2023, so a relatively recent joiner, but of close to two decades in the mining industry, working in a range of commercial and strategy roles in projects and mines in Australia, Mongolia, Singapore, and the Americas.
I'm delighted to be here today with you to share our views on copper markets and how we see supply and demand trends playing out into the future. If you'd like to learn more about our views on the future for copper, we've also published a more detailed note in the insights section of our blog, and you also have a printed copy on your chair. As Brandon mentioned, at BHP, we believe our portfolio is well- positioned to take advantage of the global future trends, and copper is a core component of that.
Copper has shaped human history for millennia, and as we look forward, we believe it will continue to play a crucial role in the future of our world. The key macro trends of the future and traditional drivers of metals demand, such as population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and the associated increased living standards, are expected to remain strong.
W e expect copper to remain an essential building block to modern life as the world seeks to improve living standards for millions of people, transitions to a net-zero economy, and further digitizes its industries and societies. Cost competitiveness will be key to capturing these opportunities, and our track record of operational excellence positions us well for the future. With our experience, we're ready to meet the challenges the industry faces in bringing on new supply.
These include declining mineral grades, cost headwinds, and the increasing expectations of stakeholders and communities, which create an environment where companies like BHP, which are existing operations across a globally significant resource base, have strong financials, and have established social value credentials, can really help us capture those opportunities ahead.
Now turning to demand, we think about copper demand in three key categories. The first is traditional demand, which refers to the basic relationship between economic growth, electricity consumption, and copper. Traditional demand is like the foundation. It's got a broad range of end uses and is deeply embedded in the global economy via its connection to electricity. Traditional demand in the developed world is expected to remain strong as living standards rise globally, and the demand for copper is expected to follow suit.
Meanwhile, in developing economies, which have nearly 5× the population of high-income economies, people are increasingly pushing to achieve those high standards of living. All of this translates into a greater need for copper. In terms of energy transition, the demand there captures the additional demand from copper associated with increased electrification.
T here are some obvious winners in renewables and EVs, but as we move away from fossil fuels in the broader economy, there are other opportunities, including industrial processes, heating, home cooking, and the switch to energy, which switched to electricity in these end uses, is also positive for copper, again, across a relatively broad range of end users. F inally, digital demand, which has emerged as a category more recently and is largely driven by the data center-related demand that we've seen.
This demand is expected to grow significantly as AI-enabled technologies require more and more computing power, and AI itself is expected to have a very wide range of applications. So in our forecast for global electricity consumption for data centers, we expect to see an increase from today's rate of about 2% of global electricity demand to 9% by 2050, and the associated copper demand associated with that increasing sixfold by 2050.
To show this in the numbers, in the waterfall chart here, you can see that we believe that copper demand is on track to add an additional 22 million tons of cumulative demand between now and 2050. That's growth of about 70% to over 50 million tons. This equates to a compound annual growth rate of 2% through to 2050, with a higher rate in the nearer term of 2.6% between now and 2035.
As I mentioned before, that demand is coming from a range of end users, giving us additional confidence in the forecast as it's spread across multiple sectors of the global economy and multiple regions. There will, however, be some balancing factors for this significant growth in copper demand, in particular from substitution and thrifting, which has been a feature of the copper industry for decades, and you can see here that we're making in the orange bars some adjustments to our forward view to reflect the potential of these trends.
On substitution and thrifting, we do anticipate that there will be less copper in particular applications in the future, particularly as the newer technologies like EVs and renewables undergo further iteration and improvement. The more traditional uses of copper have been subject to substitution pressures for decades, and a lot of the easy gains have been made.
So any future changes to product design, production lines, new equipment, retraining of workers to use alternate materials are additional considerations for substitution and thrifting beyond cost. Secondly, recycled copper is also expected to be an important source of supply to help meet the large copper demand growth over the next 30 years.
The average lifetime of copper in use is around 20 years. So this means that a lot of the copper in China consumed in its growth boom is now starting to return as scrap. We expect scrap to grow as a share of total copper supply from around 1/3 today to about half by 2050.
But even including these impacts of substitution, thrifting, and the availability of scrap and recycled copper to meet demand, we still estimate that the world will need about 10 million tons of new mine supply or primary supply in the next 10 years. Now we're going to talk a little bit about where that might come from. In the last 30 years, we've really seen very impressive growth in global mine supply, with production doubling in that time to about 22 million tons today.
This is primarily due to increases from Latin America, particularly Chile, the Asia-Pacific region, and more recently from Africa. You can see this growth really pick up here from the 1990s onwards. The industry's current challenge is to repeat this substantial production growth in less than half the time.
Looking globally, we would expect mine supply growth over the next decade to be dominated by the same regions: Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. Africa is expected to have the highest growth rate, albeit off a much lower base, while Latin America will continue to make the most significant contribution in absolute terms.
On Africa, in our forecasts, we have included some additional volumes that might be considered less mature in their development cycle, reflecting the impressive project execution seen in African projects over the last decade, where we've seen 90% production growth in a decade. But despite the success of the African projects and the positive forward prospects, there remain many reasons to be very excited about Latin America and particularly Chile, which will absolutely be needed to meet this global demand.
One of the reasons for that is that the industry is likely to disappoint on forecast primary supply. Even under some of the more optimistic supply forecasts, which include the development of all probable copper projects, a significant gap in 2035 is evident. The orange dashed line here shows you our view of demand for primary mine supply, so after the application of our assumptions on recycled copper.
Secondary supply or scrap is going to meet a large portion of that future demand, but the declining mine supply still requires inducement of new mines, and a significant investment is really required from now. Given the significant investment involved and the time it takes to get that new supply to market, we think it's likely that the industry will disappoint relative to more optimistic supply forecasts. N ow we'll talk through some of the categories of that supply.
Currently operating mines are really important for meeting that future global demand over the next decade , but we estimate that existing mines will produce around 15% less copper in 2035 than they do today, and that assumes probable life extensions. These currently operating mines are going to need to work harder for longer.
But they're already mature, and they're likely to need additional capital investment to replace or upgrade aging infrastructure or processing facilities. We've done some work on the demographics of today's mines, and you can see that half of today's operating mines are older than 20 years. Now, an incredible ore body can make a big difference, and it does, but many older operations will move up the cost curve as they progress through their life cycle.
These existing corporations are also typically facing declining grades, as higher grade ore is usually mined first and lower grade left for later, and you'll see this trend here of grade decline playing out across the industry, but also in our own operations here in Chile, and both Adam and Alejandro will speak more about this today.
However, operating mines are poised to take advantage of new technologies that can improve their efficiency or recovery and can convert existing facilities and recover additional copper from waste material, and we see a lot of these opportunities being explored across the industry. But there are likely to be tougher standards to meet when renewing or extending permits and licenses due to the evolving expectations of communities, customers, and regulators.
There's, of course, a lot of advantages to know your operating environment very well, as we do here in Chile, and that's a key advantage for operating mines in today's environment. But given the strong demand signals, we expect the industry to vigorously pursue options to extend the life of these copper mines, and they'll remain critically important in meeting future demand.
On brownfield, for existing operations with substantial remaining resources, brownfield developments offer a really attractive response to the strong demand signals. According to our comprehensive project review of brownfield projects, we anticipate that new brownfield supply will make up to about 30% of total copper mine supply by 2035. These life extensions and expansions can take advantage of existing infrastructure, facilities, workforce, and expertise built up over decades.
They also generally face lower technical risks and uncertainties, but they are still subject to changing regulatory and community expectations and standards and require investment into infrastructure or replacement facilities. This can lead to higher capital intensities, which we're showing here, permitting delays, complexities, and particularly changes to permits when your existing permits don't cover your entire project lifespan.
Our recent assessment of global project capital intensities indicates a steady increase in brownfield capital intensity since 2010, and brownfield projects are now at levels similar to greenfield projects. Several factors contribute to this increase, including rising material costs, labor, supply chain constraints, and skilled labor shortages.
But a significant contribution to this is that copper producers are essentially constructing better mines, incorporating newer technologies, meeting higher health, safety, and environmental standards, addressing more community concerns, and including new or replacement infrastructure.
You'll see later in Pedro's presentation how our growth operations compare to these industry benchmarks. But despite these cost challenges, we would really expect high-quality brownfield projects to be very highly valued across the industry, given the growing demand. Technical capabilities developed through years of production, detailed ore body knowledge, remain major benefits, particularly for more complex projects later in mines' lives a nd strong social value performance is a key enabler.
S o you'll hear more about our commitments in this space from René. Finally, to greenfields. Now, greenfields continue to be challenging and face prolonged lead times. They're navigating environment and social concerns for the first time, and they're also facing uncertainties tied to new jurisdictions and regions.
Moreover, when we look into this category of supply, we find that some obstacles can't be overcome with either time or money and are, in fact, simply a question of executability rather than investability. This chart shows you the results of our investigation into a selection of the 30 largest undeveloped greenfield projects in 2024. This work showed that analysts, ourselves included, have consistently underestimated the time required to bring on new projects and overestimated the production volumes.
Start dates for more than 20 of these projects have shown a consistent pattern of delay since 2014, and all have been delayed in forecasts from 2020 onwards. I think the real kicker here is that in 2014, the majority of these projects shown on this slide were expected to be in operation by now, but none have started yet.
Given this trend, we made an additional risk adjustment to our greenfield production volumes, reflecting both project delays and, in some cases, abandonment. Greenfield development is still needed to meet the primary copper demand, but we do not believe that it will come to the market quickly or cheaply. On a more positive note, technology is a real opportunity to overcome some of these challenges, and you'll hear more about that today and tomorrow from the team here.
In the next decade, across the industry, we expect to see examples of incremental productivity improvements from AI-enabled insights in processing, the repurposing or reinvigorating of old facilities in latent capacity, and adoption of new technologies specifically related to processing and leaching. But we would see at an industry level the impact of these to be unlikely to be widespread or disruptive until at least the mid-2030s.
On leaching specifically, at an industry level, we believe that the adoption of any primary sulfide leaching technologies will need to complement existing processing infrastructure, and the economic trade-offs remain unclear and require project-by-project analysis. These technology options create options for growth under the right conditions, and we are working hard to understand and apply their potential, and you'll see how BHP is approaching this on our visit this week.
So, in conclusion, copper is crucial for our future, and we at BHP are dedicated to helping meet that rising demand, b ut the mining industry faces significant challenges to bring on new supply to meet demand. As copper grades decline, existing mines have to work harder for longer. Brownfield projects are facing higher costs and environmental and social hurdles, and greenfield projects continue to experience delays and budget overruns.
Importantly, we estimate the total bill for expansion CapEx between now and 2034 to be around $250 billion. This represents a significant increase from the previous 10 years, where the total spend on copper projects was approximately $150 billion. Mining companies need to be able to navigate the complexities, have access to world-class ore bodies, have a history of managing complex projects, have strong social value credentials, and a strong foundation to thrive.
As you'll hear more in the next three days, we believe our Chilean assets and our team are well-positioned to meet these challenges and capture the coming demand. Thanks very much for your attention. I'll now turn over to René, who'll give you an update on the operating environment here in Chile.
Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Chile, welcome to Antofagasta. For many of you, the first time visiting this country, so welcome, everybody. My name is René Muga. I'm Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Latin America for BHP, based in Santiago.
I joined BHP three years ago and have been more than 15 years in the mining industry. I am delighted to be here to discuss some political and economic context of Chile as a country and also how we are approaching social value in our operations. During the last decades, Chile has developed a favorable investment framework and a strong institutional system.
Chile was the first South American country to be accepted as OECD member in 2010, and according to the World Competitiveness Ranking 2024 by the International Institute for Management Development, which measures economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure, Chile has first place in Latin America and holds the 44th place worldwide. In terms of political rights, civil liberties, and corruption, Chile also stands out compared to the rest of the region.
As you know, in October 2019, the country experienced an unprecedented social unrest. Government response to this protest was to address the discontent through democratic means. A consensus was reached that a constitutional change could cope with the root causes of the unrest. Two separate referendums to approve new drafts of the constitution were held, and in both cases, new proposals were rejected by a large majority of votes.
This process demonstrated the strength and resilience of the country's democratic institutions and confirmed for the midterm that there won't be a new attempt to change the constitution. Chile is a presidential democracy. Elections for president of the Republic and Congress will be held in November 2025, and candidates will most likely focus their campaigns on economic growth, job creation, and particularly public security.
It is important to highlight that despite having the most left-wing government since the return to democracy, the executive's agenda has moved towards economic recovery and improving conditions for attracting more and better investments. Now, more than ever, there seems to be a consensus among all political sectors that we need to bring more investment to the country and to the mining sector, which is the backbone of Chile's economy.
The opportunity to work on a cross-aisle, pro-growth agenda that fosters investment is strong, and the investment community is optimistic about the future opportunities for the country in mining. Let's turn now to economy. Chile's economic policies are guided by a structural balance, fiscal rule, and a Fiscal Responsibility Law , which has earned recognition from major credit rating agencies, highlighting the country's fiscal stability.
The central bank independence embedded in the constitution has allowed for effective monetary policy management, maintaining an average year-on-year inflation rate of 4.2% over the past 30 years. Recent economic indicators are promising. First, looking at the inflation. As you can see on the chart, after peaking at almost 13% in 2022, inflation has been on a downward trend, and it's projected to reach the central bank's 3% target in first quarter 2026. In the case of monetary policy, it has been proactive and responsive.
Central Bank of Chile began reducing the monetary policy rate in July 2023, and it currently stands at 5.25%, with further cuts anticipated in the coming months, which will continue to support growth and stability in financial markets. Speaking of growth, as you can see on the chart as well, the Central Bank of Chile forecasts GDP growth between 2.25% and 2.75% for 2024.
In conclusion, this solid institutional framework positions Chile well for a solid recovery from economic distress. Copper is essential for Chilean growth. Almost 50% of Chilean exports are copper. This is why mining investments are key for achieving sustained growth in Chile. Investments in Chile are beginning to recover and stabilize. As you can see on the left, investments measured as gross fixed capital formation are expected to decline slightly in 2024, but rebound with a 5% growth rate in 2025.
As well as this, on the right, you can see the private investors are showing renewed confidence. For the period between 2024 and 2027, a year ago, June 2023, the estimated annual private investment was $26 billion, and then now, a year later, this was increased to $44 billion. The mining sector accounts for almost half of this increase, with investment expectations up 60% from a year earlier, particularly because of the closure of the tax discussion, as we will see later in the presentation.
In the context of this growth in investments, BHP has developed a leading position in Chile, ready to capitalize on the expected growth in investments. Our strong network of stakeholders, relationships, and exceptional reputation will be fundamental to support our projects that you will see in Pedro's presentation later today.
In May 2023, the Chilean Congress approved the government's royalty bill with a significant majority, concluding over two years of intense discussions. In our view, this majority assures that no further discussion on mining taxation will be reopened in the medium term. This process was marked by continuous dialogue between the government and the mining sector. As BHP, we led the industry by actively participating and sharing our perspective in Congress and engaging with the Ministry of Finance and other key authorities.
Our direct advocacy efforts were further supported by the work done through the Mining Council, where we also took a leading role. This discussion is now closed, and even with a left-leaning government, we have achieved a stable and predictable tax environment for the years ahead.
While the new effective tax rate represents a notable increase in the mining sector's total tax burden, it is important to highlight that the final version of the bill is more balanced than the initial proposal from 2021, which had suggested an average industry effective tax rate exceeding 70%. The final outcome demonstrates the government's willingness to consider industry positions and negotiate for a more reasonable tax burden.
Importantly, as you can see at the bottom of the slide, the bill does not affect the existing tax stability agreement that BHP holds. Consequently, Escondida began paying the new tax in 2024, and Spence will follow from 2033 onwards. During royalty discussions, we asked for measures to compensate the loss of competitiveness in Chile and drive the attention of the authorities to the permitting system. The permitting system in Chile has become fragmented, lengthy, unpredictable, and costly.
This issue gained significant attention last year during the royalty bill discussions, highlighting its impact on the country's competitiveness. BHP played an active role in proposals to streamline the permitting process, including by commissioning and sharing an international benchmarking report and proactive engagements. The need for a better permitting system is now a shared priority across all political sectors, and the government has made it a legislative agenda priority.
After many years of inaction, the current government has successfully advanced two bills, marking a positive step towards a more rational permitting process in Chile. These two bills, submitted to Congress by the executive in January 2024, aim to reform the permit system, first, the environmental assessment system reform, and secondly, the sectoral permit system reform. The goal is to reduce permit processing times by 30%.
While the legislative process is still ongoing, there has been progress, and both bills are expected to be approved next calendar year. However, despite the good spirit behind these two initiatives, the real effect of both laws will probably fall short of the desired 30% reduction in permitting process times, and therefore, we anticipate increased activity in the permitting reform discussion moving forward.
Before I close, let me briefly refer to our Social Value Framework and goals, as we are applying them in our Chilean operations. This is just an introduction, since most of you are familiar with our Social Value Framework , and you all will get to see many examples of social value in action when you visit our sites in the coming two days. Social value starts with our purpose: to bring people and resources together to build a better world.
It is about making a positive contribution to society. We do this by ensuring that through the decisions we make every day, we take into account what, in the long term, is of mutual benefit to our stakeholders, partners, environment, and our shareholders. As you can see, we have highlighted here examples for BHP Chile operations in each of the six pillars of our framework.
The good work done here, advancing these initiatives, underpins our relationships and positions us well for the future. We have shown what BHP can bring when it comes to engagement for approvals and permittings. We will review a couple of them in more detail with my colleagues' presentations, but before I conclude, I want to touch on the work we are doing in Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples are important partners for BHP's activities.
Across our Minerals Americas business, BHP operates on or close to the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples, and we have deep respect for their cultures, rights, perspectives, and aspirations. Escondida developed a new Indigenous partnership strategy, which aims to build stable, long-term relationships based on trust and mutual benefit with the five Indigenous communities of Bordes Sur, an area more than 100 km away from our operations.
This is also the case of Pampa Norte, particularly Cerro Colorado, where we have engaged all Indigenous communities, opening a long-term discussion on development. Most of these communities already have an established relationship with Cerro Colorado because of their vicinity to the site.
As you can see on the right, BHP's strategy is focused on resolving past grievances, honoring commitments, and creating opportunities for regular and structured dialogue within BHP and Indigenous communities that will contribute to improved relationships, build greater trust, and proactively address community concerns. Focus areas are defined in alignment with BHP's Indigenous peoples' policy statement.
First, supporting communities on their own social and economic development goals to help co-create new opportunities for Indigenous communities. S econdly, supporting Indigenous procurement via an increased number of partnerships with Indigenous-owned businesses and implementing new projects to create stronger Indigenous businesses.
In Indigenous employment, we successfully surpassed our fiscal year 25 Indigenous employee participation aspiration of 10%, one year ahead of plan, for Escondida as well as for Pampa Norte. In fiscal year 24, we completed an inaugural assessment of health of our relationships.
Six Chilean Indigenous partners were interviewed via a confidential and independently run process conducted by Ipsos. If you look at the bottom left of the slide, you can see they indicated they had seen an improvement in relationships, health, and more optimistic about the future health of their relationships with BHP.
We will continue making efforts in our Indigenous partnership pillar of social value, taking also the lead in the Chilean mining industry. Thank you for your attention, and let me now hand over to Fran to talk through our Chilean copper business financial performance. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Antofagasta office here today. For those that haven't met me before, my name is Fran Summerhayes. I am the Vice President of Finance for Minerals Americas. I've been enrolled for almost four years. I'm based in Santiago in Chile.
I've been with BHP for over 16 years in a variety of finance roles, including head office and our assets across the globe. So, as Brandon mentioned earlier, our Chilean copper business is significant, not just in terms of resource or global position, but for BHP, making up a majority of BHP's copper earnings, as highlighted here.
As you can see on the chart on the left, we have consistently delivered high margins over the long term, an average of 58% over the last 20 years. Over the last five years, we've delivered an EBITDA margin of $5.6 billion per annum a nd while this is impressive, this is on a copper price of $3.60 a pound, and on today's prices, this would be much higher.
This translates into healthy returns, with an average capital employed over this period of 22%, demonstrating our exceptional operations of our assets here in Chile. These strong results are thanks to our strong cost discipline, underpinned by the BHP Operating System , and our continuous improvement culture, and our disciplined application of the capital allocation framework. Let's dig into the finances in a little bit more detail.
Since FY20, inflation has resulted in significant headwinds across our industry across the globe. The mining industry has also experienced cost pressures above headline inflation. With the heavy unionized workforce here in Chile, wage inflation has increased by over 40%. Diesel and explosive prices have increased by over 100%, and power costs, as you can see here, have also increased. These costs combined make up a majority of our cost base, as illustrated on the right here.
BHP's Chilean copper operations have also had other cost pressures over this period. For example, we're in a period of heavy studies to support our growth options, and while these come with operating costs, they are necessary to ensure our operations maximize future value. These costs are included in our reported unit cost, but not in the C1 cost reported by many of our competitors.
Over this period, we've also paid enterprise agreements, that is, sign-on bonuses over this period, as we've reached new agreements with our unionized workforce. Despite these headwinds, we have consistently managed to stay ahead of both inflation and our competitors in keeping our costs under control. So how have we managed this? Productivity is, as you would have heard Mike Henry speak to, our biggest value lever.
We always strive to make the most out of our existing operations by applying our continuous improvement mindset. Leveraging our people, technology, and our substantial position within the industry, we have managed to lift productivity across our Chilean copper business by approximately $4 billion of benefits since FY20. T here are three main avenues of productivity improvement: people, automation, and commercial.
So starting with people, we have improved labor productivity, that is the amount of activity performed by each person by over 10% over the last couple of years. We've done this by leveraging the BHP Operating System . We ensure that we constantly challenge each other to think differently, eliminate inefficiencies to protect our margins, a nd you'll hear and see a lot more about this this afternoon and tomorrow with Alejandro and Christian on Wednesday.
In automation, we have tapped into our experiences and insights we have gained as being part of a global company. We're able to replicate and quickly adopt best practices and technologies ahead of others. For example, we are one of the first companies here in Chile to start to roll out autonomous trucks. This has delivered a 6% increase in production hours versus our autonomous ramp-up in BMA in less than six months since Spence became fully autonomous.
This is highlighting our continuous improvement mindset and globally sharing best practices, with Escondida Norte rollout of autonomous underway. T hrough our commercial agreements, we have leveraged our relationship, our strategy, and our economies of scale of our global procurement function. For example, in mobile mining equipment, tires, explosives.
T his isn't just about price. This is working with our suppliers to create a win-win outcome, and you'll see firsthand examples of this over the coming days. We have also benefited from our early adoption of our 100% renewable power purchase agreements, which has outperformed average power cost and shielded us from rising fuel input prices. These are locked in flat real power costs until the 2030s.
This relentless focus and passion to drive productivity has kept our costs in check and is expected to do so into the future. Like all copper mines, we are experiencing declining grades, deeper pits, harder ore sources. So that means we cannot sit still in productivity and continuous improvement. I was actually head of finance for WAIO when we declared ourselves the lowest cost producer in the world, and the WAIO team have continued this focus and discipline, each year sustaining and widening our lead against our competitors.
This is a challenge I relish and I have brought to my experience here in Chile. While our costs have increased, they have done so much less than our competitors, as you can see on these charts. This is a compelling demonstration that we are the premium operator. We are disciplined, and we have a strategy that delivers.
Over the past two years, Escondida and Spence's unit costs have increased by 21% and 12% respectively, versus an average of 75% against our competitors. Our discipline not only applies to operating costs, but also capital, both large and small. As Brandon mentioned, it is our role here in Minerals Americas to ensure that we bring projects that can compete against the BHP portfolio.
This includes not only spend on major growth projects, which you'll hear a lot more later today from Pedro and Adam, but also across all capital spend, including maintenance, decarbonization, and improvement capital. So maintenance capital is essential to keep the lights on and includes spend on asset integrity. For example, extending the life of Escondida's Los Colorados concentrator and Escondida's truck and shovel replacement.
It's also important to note that we include deferred stripping in this category or development stripping because it's important to continue to operate. Spend on decarbonization is also vital a nd while these amounts aren't large today due to the nature of the work, and that's working with OEMs to test equipment, we do expect this spend to increase towards the end of the five-year period as we start to roll this out. Improvement projects are generally smaller projects that focus on productivity, safety, or culture.
A great example of this is the rollout of autonomous haulage at Spence. For our Chilean copper business, our spend on these categories can be lumpy, and we're expecting over the coming years an increase in spend from recent years, as you can see on the chart on the left here.
This includes more spend on what I have just covered, but essential work such as investing in our tailings storage facility to increase capacity, as well as what we call enablers, and that is to support our growth, which you'll hear more from Pedro later. We expect a more normalized spend into the 2030s. All projects compete for capital at BHP, as you have heard. The majority of these projects beyond FY25 do not have approval for capital at this time.
This is what we call the hopper projects that must go through the Capital Allocation Framework. Just because this spend is categorized as essential and relatively small compared to our major projects, it does not mean they have an open checkbook. As we do with all our major growth projects, these are challenged for what we call the optimized without scenarios.
These capital will be value optimized, scheduled, and prioritized to maximize value and returns. This is what we mean by capital productivity in the Capital Allocation Framework on the right. The more we improve this spend, the more we're able to spend on major growth projects. Now, we use the Capital Allocation Framework to ensure we advance the right projects at the right time.
We know that over the long term, capital allocation is perhaps the key driver and differentiator of companies' performance, and that across the industry, and including within BHP, there have been periods of good allocation and periods of poor, and that is why we are so focused on it. We study our options in detail to ensure that we make the right decision at the right time.
Now, in terms of how projects compete, there is no one single metric or hurdle rate that defines a project superior to another. Instead, we look across a range of financial and other metrics, as illustrated on the left here, with the ultimate goal to maximize value and returns. Also, we know that the best informed decision captures a range of uncertainties and avoids anchoring to a single deterministic point estimate.
We also consider social value metrics, as illustrated on the right here, and these are embedded in our approach to investment and are included in what we call the non-economic quantifiable impacts, and we've detailed this framework as part of our social value briefing back in June 2022. We have a strong track record of project delivery, large and small, on time and on budget, as you'll hear more from Pedro.
With finance playing a key role in driving discipline and structure within the process. Our copper business is significant and a high-performing part of BHP. Through our strong cost discipline, productivity improvements, and our disciplined application of the Capital Allocation Framework, we have delivered strong returns, and we are expected to maintain momentum, as illustrated in our market guidance here. We've had significant production growth at Escondida.
The production is up 12% over the last two financial years and expected to deliver 10% in FY25. In Spence, we have had record production in FY24, and we're expected to maintain momentum into this financial year. We are committed to deliver value and growth for all our stakeholders, and I am confident in our ability to continue with this success into the future. Thank you, and we'll now be open for questions. Thank you.
Welcome back after the break, everyone. My name's Adam Favero. I just want to echo the comments of my colleagues about what a pleasure it is to host you here in Chile. I'm an Australian Italian. I'm a chemical engineer by trade. I've lived in Chile for almost 13 years now, and I've been with BHP for about 9 years.
I've spent most of my career between business development and project development in energy and mining, and I've had the pleasure of working in places such as Australia, Italy, the U.S., Russia, and now Chile. I'm currently the Vice President for Development and Strategic Services, where my team looks after the growth strategy for the region, as well as managing the development studies before handing them over to my colleague Pedro, who takes the projects forward into execution.
Now, the starting point for our growth strategy is our set of levers of competitive advantage that you heard Brandon touch on earlier. We start with BHP's resource base here in Chile, which is underpinned by Escondida, and that provides the foundation for us from which to maintain and then seek to grow production.
We also have latent capacity at our assets, such as 300 kilotons of leaching facility capacity, as well as critical supporting infrastructure in place, which provides for capital-efficient production growth. We've made material investments in innovation and R&D, both at the group level and the BHP Chile level, where we've had some notable successes born out of our leaching innovation center located at Escondida, and there's a number of technologies from that in action today.
Finally, we have deep project expertise and a strong track record of project delivery and project execution, as you'll hear my colleague Pedro talk about a bit later. Now, before we look to the future, it's worth considering the context of where we are today.
BHP Chile has produced about 1.3 million tons of copper per year over the past five years, and improving grades at the PL1 pushback at Escondida will enable this to increase in the short term, but the reality is that Escondida is a mature asset that has over 30 years of production history, and in the coming years, the production declines as the grade reduces from just over 0.9% today to around 0.6% in 2030.
At the same time, ore hardness is increasing, cycle time and distance are increasing, and we'll need to demolish the Los Colorados concentrator at Escondida to access the higher grades that sit underneath it in the future, so we will have a production decline if we don't take action.
T he do-nothing case that you can see on the slide would mean that BHP Chile's production would reduce to between about 0.9 million and 1 million tons per year through the next decade. Now, that decline is why we've been working hard over the past years to re-accelerate our growth studies, to develop the plans for growth primarily at Escondida, but also at Pampa Norte, to deliver growth in the 2030s, where we're targeting an average of 1.4 million tons copper production per year through that decade.
Now, beyond this, you can see that we have some further potential from other options that are slightly less mature, but that could add to the production between 1.5 and 1.6 million tons through the 2030s. So where are we with the growth studies?
You heard Brandon talk to you earlier that the focus over the past three years has been on maximizing our growth optionality across the concentrator and leaching flow sheet, across both existing and potential new facilities, all while based on deconstraining the capacity of our mines to feed those facilities.
Now, we started with many options, and we've narrowed it down to a well-defined growth pathway of 10 projects. Our concentrator strategy is focused on expansion of existing facilities at Escondida and Spence, as well as a potential new concentrator at Escondida. Our leaching strategy is differentiated and wide-ranging. It focuses on potentially applying BHP and third-party technologies across each of our mine sites located in Chile, as well as the potential new facilities at Escondida and Cerro Colorado in the future.
The projects are evaluated methodically through a stage gate process based on a range of different criteria that Fran took you through earlier. Now, the portfolio has matured to the point where the majority of our growth projects that are in development have progressed to a more advanced study phase, and at the same time, all projects are subject to competition for capital across the BHP portfolio, as Brandon talked about.
Now, we have a globally significant resource base here in Chile. At Escondida, the current resource base supports a mine life of 65 years. Development from multiple ore sources is complementary and provides us with significant flexibility. Current production is focused on the Escondida and Escondida Norte main pits, which are the two big green areas that you can see on the slide.
We have options to further develop Escondida East Deep and the Pampa Escondida resources, which you can also see here on the map, in the longer term to complement the sulfide ore feed, as well as the potential to develop Pinta Verde, which is a small green area in the top of the slide to feed the oxide leach facilities in the future.
Now, you can see on the right of the slide that a key aspect underpinning our growth plans is the increased volume of material that needs to be moved in order to provide the ore supply and accelerate the access to the higher grades in order to support the increased capacities across all of our growth pathways.
While you'll hear more about this on site, it's important to note that the highest grade ore is in the northeast of the Escondida main pit, which is that purple zone that you can see on the top side of the green area, and that sits right under the Los Colorados concentrator. As we've seen, we have a number of growth pathways at Escondida, and that brings constraints, complementarities, and interdependencies.
So we've applied a program approach across our growth workstreams at Escondida, as illustrated by the schematic on the left of the slide. Now, the overall objective here is to optimize the overall level of copper production for Escondida as a whole.
T hat means considering trade-offs based on mine deliverability and the capital to expand the facilities to support the growth, on the one hand, against the value of the increased copper production based on higher throughput and recoveries that you get from that growth.
Now, a key aspect of the program is that the concentrator and sulfide leaching growth pathways are largely complementary, with higher grade ore feeding the concentrators and lower grade ore above a cutoff grade feeding the sulfide leach. Now, the result of that is that increased ore deliverability from the mine benefits both processes. So let's dig into each of those processes.
Concentrators are the foundation of our growth program. They're a solid option for growth due to the synergies with the current facilities, the latent capacities within them, the fact it's a relatively low-risk process, and it's a process we know well.
So the first opportunity, as shown on the right of the slide, is to extend the life of the Los Colorados concentrator beyond 2027, as well as to expand the Laguna Seca concentrators to exploit the latent capacity within them. This is then complemented by the opportunity to build a new concentrator at Escondida to replace Los Colorados.
Our concentrator strategy will leverage the latest flotation technologies to improve recoveries, and the concentrator program overall provides the most relevant contribution to our Chile growth program in the 2030s. Pedro will step through each of these options in a bit more detail in the following presentation.
Now, looking at Los Colorados, the Los Colorados extension, the timing is critical, and there are trade-offs around this key decision. As we established earlier, access to the higher- grade ore in the PIL pushbacks supports Escondida's growth.
Now, as you can see on the right of the slide, the PIL pushbacks sit right underneath the Los Colorados concentrator, which means we need to remove this concentrator and the key facilities around it in order to access the higher grade that sits underneath it in all scenarios. The key question is when.
The optimal shutdown date will depend on the trade-off between the higher throughput with the extension versus accessing the higher- grade or sooner with an earlier demolition, factoring in the time of about four years to do the demolition and the stripping to the high- grade ore in PL2. Now, having looked at this for some time, we're targeting in our base case 2029 for closure, but we retain the optionality to extend this to 2031.
A key aspect to take away here is that there will always be some level of production gap because of the lag in accessing the higher grade ore under the concentrator after Los Colorados is shut down. Now, having talked about concentrators, let's turn to our leaching strategy, and before I talk about BHP's leaching strategy specifically, I think it's worth touching on leaching in general across the copper industry.
As we've laid out on this slide, we've also summarized the benefits and drawbacks of leaching on the right-hand side. Now, leaching processes to recover copper from oxide ores have been known about for decades, and in more recent times, recovery of copper from lower grade primary sulfide ore based on bioleach processes has become more common, and we've been leaching sulfide ore at Esco ndida since 2006.
As you can see on the left of the slide, there is the potential for application of leaching across a range of different material types, from already leached ore called ripios to very low-grade dump leach to lower-grade run-of-mine material on constructed leach pads through to higher-grade crushed and agglomerated material.
Now, there are multiple sulfide leaching technologies under development across the industry, from catalysts to improve existing processes to new processes to new pad designs. Now, as Laura spoke to earlier, there's no silver bullet here for the copper industry, where growth from sulfide leaching is very site and mineralogy- specific. These sulfide leaching technologies can either act as a complement or, in some cases, potentially a competitor to traditional concentrator flow sheets.
On the one hand, to target the recoveries approaching those achieved by concentrators from some of the new leaching technologies still requires crushed and agglomerated ore, which substantially increases the capital required. But on the other hand, at the other end of the spectrum, lower-grade run-of-mine sulfide leaching is subject to strict environmental requirements in most jurisdictions, which requires the construction of lined leach pads.
T hat results in increased capital investment and higher cutoff grades, which limits the opportunity for very low-grade dump leaching, where there aren't many places that you can actually do that. Notwithstanding this, we do believe that leaching can offer growth under the right conditions, where the sweet spot is where the leaching of run-of-mine sulfide ore is complementary to concentrator operations, as is the case that we have at Escondida.
Our leaching strategy has been developed to maximize the optionality using our latent capacity through potential application of a range of different technologies across a range of locations and materials.
Now, we believe that our leaching strategy is differentiated. As you can see on the left of the slide here, BHP made a strategic decision to invest in facilities to test and develop new leaching technologies more than 20 years ago, and we've been successful in implementing within our operations several leaching technologies that have been developed in-house, such as FullSaL.
Tomorrow, we'll give you an overview of the Leaching Innovation Center at Escondida that you can see on the right of the slide, a nd this is a unique facility that allows us to trial different leaching technologies all the way from the bench through to the demonstration scale.
Now, we're taking a more open approach than others in trialing the different third-party leaching technologies as well as our own, all with potential application to our Chilean assets. Now, the context for our strategy is clear. We have the resource base, significant tankhouse capacity of around 100 kilotons at Escondida, with multiple locations identified for the extension or expansion of sulfide leaching, and this leads to the opportunity from a number of technologies.
As shown on the right of the slide, the first is FullSaL. This is a technology that was developed and patented by BHP with a copper recovery of between 50% and 60%. We're implementing this at Escondida to the oxide leach infrastructure to process mixed and secondary sulfide ores.
Next, we have Jetti, which is a third-party technology that many of you have likely heard of, and that can lead to an additional recovery of between 5-10 percentage points over and above the base recovery that you'd expect from traditional run-of-mine sulfide leaching. Jetti is under study at a relatively mature stage of development for application on our sulfide leach run-of-mine material, and we have continued testing underway.
Then we have BHP Leach, which delivers a recovery of between 60%-80% depending on the ore type and the preparation, and I'll explain that in a bit more detail on the next slide. F inally, there is Nuton that delivers a recovery of between 75%-85% with a cycle time of between about 150-400 days.
Now, this is a technology that's been patented by Rio Tinto that involves relatively high capital investment in crushing and agglomeration, which makes it more of a future option for Escondida. Now, it's safe to say we're pretty excited about the progress we've made with BHP Leach.
It's a patented technology for nitrate leaching of primary sulfide ore, considering run-of-mine or crushed material, and it's 100% in-house developed at our Leaching Innovation Center at Escondida. Having passed through multiple stages of testing, we're now in the process of constructing an industrial-scale demonstration pad and processing plant, which you can see in the middle of the slide, and which we'll be visiting tomorrow at Escondida.
We hope to have preliminary results from this by the end of the next calendar year, and to illustrate our assessment of the prospectivity of it, we're investing about $180 million in that demonstration.
Now, key themes to determine the feasibility of this technology that will be tested by the demonstration are confirming the copper recovery and the reagent consumption, as well as understanding the generation and management of NOx gases, which will be critical to its feasibility.
At this time, we believe recoveries on run-of-mine sulfide ore to be high in the order of between 60% and 70% across a cycle time of between about 250 and 350 days. Now, we're studying the application of this exciting technology, firstly with already leached ore, or ripios, where, subject to the demonstration results, we expect the production potential to be between about 35-55 kilotons of copper incremental production from as early as 2030, and Pedro will explain this project in a bit more detail.
L ooking to the future, we're also studying the potential to roll out BHP Leach to the active run-of-mine area of Escondida sulfide leach in the early 2030s, and that's something that's in the potential upside over and above the 1.4 million-ton target that I mentioned earlier. It's relatively early days, but this is a prospective technology that we expect can play a key role in our leaching strategy across our Chilean assets.
Now, turning to Pampa Norte, the context is that we've been working to improve the performance of Spence Concentrator over the past years. You'll hear more about this on Wednesday regarding Spence Concentrator upgrade program, which has materially improved runtime, throughput, and recovery against the SGO project outcomes.
In addition, as further context in our non-growth case, our leaching facilities at Spence would otherwise close in 2029 due to depletion of the oxide ores, and Cerro Colorado has already moved into care and maintenance given the expiry of its operating permit. This context provides the opportunity to improve production both from the concentrator and leaching pathways across Pampa Norte.
At Spence, we have mature studies underway to further increase concentrator recovery and throughput beyond the already delivered improvements. I n addition, we have a project at an advanced stage to extend the life of the Spence leaching facilities through application of BHP's SAL2 technology, and we have an environmental permit application in process for that. Beyond this, there's also the potential to restart Cerro Colorado in the future in a phased manner.
Now, turning to permitting, this is a critical element to delivering on our growth, and it's something we've been progressing in parallel with our studies over the past years. To begin with, it's important to understand that in Chile, the Environmental Impact Assessment System has been in place since around the mid-1990s, and the design, while it generally aligns with international benchmarks, its implementation is somewhat lagging, where it tends to be bureaucratic with potential for delays and challenges.
Now, our permits are on a critical path for most of our projects, so we have robust strategies in place that maximize the chances of accelerated approval. We've had a centralized team focused on major permits at the Chile level for the past three years, and we have a strategy of having leading environmental credentials as well as having strong stakeholder relationships to support our permit applications and, at the same time, shape the conversation on permitting reform, as you heard René talk about earlier.
Now, how does this tie into our planned approach? An important aspect to understand here in Chile is that there are basically two types of environmental permitting instruments which we've laid out here on the slide. On the one hand, a DIA, or Environmental Impact Declaration, represents a more simplified, accelerated process for the cases where the projects don't have significant impacts.
But on the other hand, an EIA, or Environmental Impact Study in English, is a more thorough process that applies to projects that do cause significant impacts and need specific measures to address them, which typically takes more time. Now, our strategy involves taking a proactive approach to maximize the chances of achieving DIAs, particularly for our new concentrator at Escondida.
However, it will ultimately be the authority's discretion that determines whether that's possible. So that's why we take a rigorous approach to our permit applications while incorporating environmental aspects into the design of our projects, all while having proactive engagement with our stakeholders and relevant agencies regarding our growth program.
So the timing for these permits and specifically our success in achieving approval through DIAs will be critical for the delivery of the projects as per the schedules that Pedro will take you through shortly, but we're confident that we start from a position of strength. Now, putting it all together, we have an extensive portfolio of growth opportunities that have been originated and developed over the past three years.
Key growth options are well advanced, and you can see these broken out here in the build-up to the 1.4 million tons target through the 2030s. We've advanced through our key growth studies, such as the expansion of the Laguna Seca concentrators and a new concentrator at Escondida to replace Los Colorados.
We're in a similar position for leaching growth at Spence, sorry, leaching growth at Escondida, underpinned by the prospective BHP Leach application to the ripios area, as well as potential growth at Spence and a potential restart of Cerro Colorado.
Now, there remain further studies which are less mature, such as the BHP Leach application to the active area of Escondida sulfide leach, as well as a potential larger second stage of Cerro Colorado, and together, these provide further growth potential to an aspiration of between about 1.5 and 1.6 million tons per year through the next decade.
Now, with multiple avenues for growth, we're confident that we have the right strategy with the right options that can compete for capital and deliver significant value for BHP. So, what could the profile look like for Escondida from here?
In this chart, we've aimed to illustrate the indicative production outcomes in the next decade. A key assumption here is that Los Colorados closes in 2029, and you can see that here in the chart that results in a dip around 2030 as that throughput comes offline. The productions then picked up as the new projects, particularly the Laguna Seca expansion and the new concentrator at Escondida, come online, and then it's picked up further as the higher grade from PL2 starts to be accessed from around 2033.
Now, as a caveat, despite the maturing level of our studies, there are a number of factors which will continue to shape this profile in the coming years, so it should be taken purely as illustrative and not a firm forecast, and this is not guidance. As outlined on the slide, the factors include permitting, technology success, sequencing, and approval outcomes.
However, overall, given the maturity and breadth of our options, we have the confidence that the growth at Escondida will support us in achieving our copper growth targets that we've talked about for the Chile level. Now, hopefully, you understand more on our growth strategy here in Chile. I'll now hand over to Pedro to take you through the execution of our projects. Thank you.
Okay. So we're getting to the part that probably everyone is waiting for, to hear more about our projects. First of all, I think we need to acknowledge how proud I feel of the team that we have and that have preceded me this morning. It's amazing how the culture that we have in BHP and the professionalism of everyone that works not only in Chile, across the globe in our operations. So thank you, Adam, for your presentation.
It's really a pleasure to host you here in Chile to discuss our growth program. As I mentioned before, my name is Pedro Correa. I am the Vice President for Projects for Minerals Americas. I bring 25 years of multicultural experience working in Japan, the United States, and in Chile. I joined BHP in 2005, more than 20 years serving in several different capacities across our operations, both in Minerals Americas but also in petroleum.
Actually, just before I went to petroleum, I was working in the last decade growth program that we have here in Chile through OGP1, the desal plant that we're going to see this afternoon, all our projects in leaching and Escondida, and also the early stages of SGO that everyone has spoken about.
Since 2021, I have the pleasure of actually leading the projects team, building the foundation for the growth program that we are going to be talking about today. So let's go to the conversation. Our team in Minerals Americas has consistently shown a disciplined and safe approach to delivery. This slide shows you how well we compare to the industry benchmarks, but firstly, I want to call out your attention to safety.
As called out by Brandon, my colleagues, and all the people that you will be seeing during the next few days, safety is our most important priority. Thus, you should be living, breathing every day through this visit: safety. Now, let's talk about some of the other measures of success that we have in Minerals Americas. As you know, we have been focused on delivering cost and schedule.
However, now we're shifting to seeing the full delivery of the business case as our primary measure of success. You will hear from us talking about delivery of investments, not only projects. This is absolutely a strategic shift. Our post-investment reviews confirm that we have delivered 95% of our business case in our investments.
As explained before, this goes beyond cost and schedule. It includes all our key value drivers, internal rate of return, NPV, among others. Let's talk now about cost growth through phases. The industry benchmarking is showing that during the life cycle of a project, costs will grow 55% from conceptual studies all the way to execution. This is nothing to feel proud of.
In the past year, we have gone through a journey to beat the benchmark and create the foundation of a predictable delivery. As a result of that, we have managed to achieve today only 5% growth in cost in our own portfolio. How we have done this? By focusing on optimizing the project designs, quantities, commercial terms, controlling cost creep. For example, last year only, we achieved 18% cost mitigation through our program that equates to $1.4 billion in our portfolio.
Finally, an important role is being played by our global structure, our colleagues in Australia, Canada, and our engineering partners that share their expertise. Most important, the main role is played by the great teams that we deliver our growth program. Successful investment delivery is not just about having the right credentials. It's also about having the right strategies to deal with the challenges that we will be facing. As Fran mentioned earlier, the cost environment has become challenging with higher inflation.
We foresee a tighter contractor market here in Chile in the next few days, in the next few years, sorry. As you saw from Laura's presentation, we could see the industry trying to bring a lot of additional copper supply in the Latin American region. There will be ferocious competition for contractors and suppliers.
So externally, we are securing the right talent. We have shifted from re-tendering the engineering work in each phase of a project to locking in engineering and construction companies early in study phases for services all the way to execution. This will optimize the bidding process, award times, transfers from one project to another to deliver an agile approach. We want to reduce waste, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness.
I'm happy to announce that we recently decided to partner with Fluor for our expansion to Laguna Seca concentrator and the new concentrator, and with Bechtel to partner for our initial application of our BHP leaching technology at Escondida. We have been addressing cost inflation by implementing bundling strategies, creating positive tension between our suppliers, and providing continuity of work for our contractors.
This has shown results in delivery times, overheads, mobilization costs, among other benefits. In summary, we are leveraging our scale as a competitive advantage that we have across the globe. On the other side, internally, we are designing our projects to be fit for purpose, to ensure to allocate capital efficiently.
Moreover, it's important to highlight that we are advancing in our engineering further for our projects for pre-commitments and initiating early detailed engineering also for earthworks. This means that we can potentially start construction work while in late stage of studies, ahead of full FID, with the intention to reduce the risk of delivery, schedule, and bring copper sooner.
This is the similar approach that we had in the past with Jansen Stage One. As you can see in this slide, and as you can see on the left side of this slide, we have a proven record of delivery of large projects. As an example, as I mentioned before, Organic Growth Project Number One, OGP1, completed in fiscal year 2015 to expand Laguna Seca concentrator that significantly lifted Escondida production.
We also delivered Spence Growth Option SGO in fiscal year 2022 to construct a brand new concentrator at Spence operation. SGO was delivered well by the team despite the challenges of COVID. To get to this point on our delivery, we have applied our continuous improvement mindset through the BHP Operating System , as you heard from Brandon and my colleagues, and we have looked for new ways of working to ensure we are prepared to deliver the growth program that we are presenting to you.
We have reorganized our teams to specialize on major brownfield type of projects such as leaching, concentrators, and tailings. This lets us build expertise in our team, growing and maintaining knowledge of complex construction designs with an end-to-end approach mindset as we have spoken. There are still lessons to be learned, both internally and externally, and we have taken on board the need of high-quality engineering and better risk management of new technologies, constructions, suppliers, and brownfield projects.
After the Spence Growth Option, we have some challenges with the operation of the concentrator, but two years later, Spence has shown record year productions. We don't just learn from investment in our region. We have replicated good practices from our global BHP projects and progressing well, such as South Flank and Jansen in the past. We have to be recognized as a continuous investment learning organization.
So let's talk now about the reason we are all here, the passion that actually brings us together today. Let me give you an overview of Escondida projects. As you can see, the magnitude of the potential transformation is absolutely awesome and unprecedented. It's one in a lifetime generation opportunity for us to execute the world's largest copper mine in the world. Today, we're going to discuss in detail growth projects highlighted in red on the map.
Laguna Seca Expansion will take place, as you can see in the map at the bottom center of the slide, in the same place where we built the concentrator we established in 2002, and we added the second line in 2015 in OGP1. Just for the knowledge, you will hear us talking about OGP1, but actually, OGP1, as today stands for, is the second line of Laguna Seca. So don't get confused about that, okay?
To the right side of Laguna Seca, we have planned the site for the new concentrator. We chose this position to the lower earthwork and operating cost, thanks to the gravity feeding of tailings, reduced length of conveyors, and also operational flexibility to feed the primary crusher from both Escondida pits.
Further up to the right from there, we have the massive sulfide leach pad where we have planned our implementation of our BHP leaching technology that Adam talked about before. You will see actually the scale of it tomorrow when we visit the site with Alejandro. Now in blue, in the center of the slide, you will see numerous enablers projects, some of which are required before construction delivery of the concentrator growth projects.
We need to move the truck shop , warehouse, demolish Los Colorados as part of the mine sequencing plan to access PL2. They were built a long time ago, and now we want to access high-grade ore below them. Let's take a closer look on the concentrator projects. Here we have Laguna Seca Expansion s, a project with two main packages. Firstly, we're planning to increase throughput by 15 million tons per annum, 15% increase from today.
We will do that by another line and another SAG mill. Why? If we don't do that and add another SAG mill, crushing will become the bottleneck as the ore hardness will increase in the future. Secondly, we're planning to increase recovery by 1-4 percentage points through the new HydroFloat technology and additional mechanical cells, the Jamesons.
Together, this targeted expansion to the concentrator will take advantage of the latent capacity in our flow sheet. The cost of this project is reasonably high in CapEx, but will require very little ongoing OpEx for the incremental copper generated. For this reason, we think this will be an attractive project with a healthy internal rate of return. In terms of timing, we're planning for the Laguna Seca Expansion to be producing copper between 2030 and 2031, and for this, the critical task is permits.
We are looking to submit an environmental impact declaration, DIA. This is the short permit that Adam was talking about before, compared to the environmental impact study. In late fiscal year 2025, and expected to last around 12 months. As the DIA, or short permit, can only be submitted once the title for the site, we're submitting a DIA for LSE first and then later on for the concentrator.
We will talk through the combined timelines in later slides. However, the new concentrator should hit first copper only one year later of this expansion. As I said earlier, we signed with Fluor a contract, and they will be providing an A-team as our engineer partner for this project. Recently, we worked with Fluor on Spence Concentrator, and we are delighted to do it again.
This brings global leading expertise in concentrator design, construction, and experience with current copper projects that are happening already in Chile. Pre-commitments are being prepared for long lead items and earthworks to prepare the site. This will ensure that we can hit the ground running.
Let's go now to the Escondida New Concentrator . The Escondida New Concentrator is the largest investment that we are progressing right now in Chile. We need to replace the aging Los Colorados between fiscal year 2029 and with a possible extension or capacity of extended until fiscal year 2031.
We have been working hard assessing the options for the design. We have considered more than 100 different technology options during the conceptual studies, with special attention paid to technology readiness, but also risk assessment on each one.
After an extensive process, we concluded that highly innovative technologies did not offer enough gains to compensate the risk for those. As a result, we have chosen more traditional flow sheets and selectively incorporated some new technology. As an example of the new technologies that we already talked about, we are considering to have the addition of HydroFloat coarse particle flotation.
Change will be improved recoveries between 2-4 percentage points in the concentrator. The use of HydroFloat particle flotation, as I had pointed out yesterday to some of you, is a fast-follower technology strategy and is already used in several other operations around the globe, not with the same scales, but being used.
We have also selected throughput capacity of 45 million tons per annum, and this will require an increased mine movement speed of 420-520 million tons per annum that Alejandro will speak at length tomorrow. The capital intensity is between $15-$21 per kilotons of copper equivalent, very competitive with the market, and we will go through a comparison of similar projects later in the presentation.
Like Laguna Seca, Fluor also has signed a contract and being the selected engineer and partner for the new concentrator, we see synergies in this approach. To discuss timing, we're aiming to submit a DIA of the new concentrator just immediately after Laguna Seca Expansion permit being approved. This will allow us to FID sometime between 2027 and 2028, and to produce copper between 2031 and 2032, followed by an approximately 12-month ramp-up. Excuse me.
Let's talk now about Los Colorados concentrator life extension. As Adam pointed out, he has already gone into the details of the extension of Los Colorados, so I will be actually brief here. The project will be about keeping production until concentrator is almost online. Los Colorados was built in 1990, and it was designed for a lifespan of only 20 years. You can imagine that.
We have already extended multiple times, making absolutely a great use of that asset. The cost of maintaining further the asset will be between $200-$300 million, and there is also no need of applying for an additional environmental permit in order to do so. About Los Colorados concentrator demolition.
Below Los Colorados concentrator, there is 640 million tons of ore that we want to unlock underneath Los Colorados concentrator plant. This is why demolishing Los Colorados plant, it's absolutely paramount.
Just for you to understand and realize the context of this, these are 200 hectares of facilities. To put it in context, we're talking about 300 football fields altogether that are completely packed with concrete and steel and infrastructure. This is a super complex project. It's not simply demolishing the whole site.
We are also assessing ways to actually recover equipment and take advantage of some of that infrastructure that also will need to be removed or relocated, such as crushers and conveyors. The cost of demolition of Los Colorados is related to the scope and the complexity of the project.
Let's talk now about leaching in Escondida. Leaching in Escondida, we have a number of leaching options, as mentioned by Adam. Technology is being assessed. The most advanced option is to deploy our BHP Leach technology at the ripios portion of the sulfide leach pad.
BHP Leach technology is promising in terms of improving cycle times and recovery, almost doubling recovery from conventional leaching. It's been tested at scale at the demonstration plant currently with actually very good results. This is our fastest large-scale deployment option as BHP Leach. With this new technology, we can give the oxide leach area pad a new life. Otherwise, it will be sitting there until closure.
We're thinking outside of the box, economizing our resources with the projects. It does not compete with other processing options for additional spent ore. It is showing promising internal rate of returns in between 18%-24%, and we are extremely excited to partner with Bechtel to deliver this major leaching project. Having previously worked with them and built Escondida Oxide Leach Area pad , OLAP project, Laguna Seca concentrator, water supply projects, and many others.
This concludes the presentation portion of the presentation regarding Escondida. Let's now go and talk about Pampa Norte. So, as you know, Pampa Norte is an asset that is divided by two operations, one being Spence and the other one being Cerro Colorado. You will actually be visiting in the next few days Spence, not Cerro Colorado in this opportunity.
Cerro Colorado, as you know, went into care and maintenance in December 2023, and therefore the only active operation that we have today is Spence. Firstly, we're going to discuss some incremental growth options at Spence to upgrade our leaching, the concentrator production, and then we will discuss at the end the restart of Cerro Colorado. We're looking to implement proven BHP Simple Approach to Leaching , SAL2 as we call it, leaching technology at the sulfide leach pad in Spence.
This is a mature project that we are expecting actually to FID, going into execution next year, calendar year 2025. By enabling the effective leaching of new type of ore, we can extend the useful life of cathodes, process all the way to fiscal year 2031. It has a strong business case with relatively little capital deployed, only costing between $100-$140 million. Let's talk now about Spence Concentrator growth.
Since the Spence Concentrator was opened in May 2022, we have successfully implemented upgrades to enhance reliability, throughput, and recovery, a nd the operation has enjoyed record production, as I mentioned before, in fiscal year 2023 and 2024. Yo u will hear much more about that with Christian when we visit Spence. We are considering two more upgrades, actually, in Spence Concentrator.
The first one is to lift throughput from 95,000 tons per day to 105,000 tons per day a nd the second one is to lift recovery by three to seven percentage points through upgrades in the flotation cells. It's an efficient expansion of existing facilities and is showing an extremely healthy rate of return that goes between 13%-55%.
Cerro Colorado. Cerro Colorado is currently on care and maintenance, as pointed out, with a permit of three years that runs until fiscal year 2027. But we have the option actually to extend two more additional years that permit. We have developed a phase approach restarting operation. Phase one alone is what we're showing here on the slide. This is a slower maturity option that we are still actively developing and optimizing. It's an option that you need to be aware that could change.
Phase one, use the existing BHP Simple Approach to Leaching , SAL2 technology to process the primary sulfide resources. It takes advantage of existing infrastructure for more capital efficiency restart that will enable 20 years of processing at Cerro Colorado. This option will require an investment on seawater supply infrastructure from the coast to the site. Let me be very clear, seawater, not the saltwater.
Beyond Phase I, there is a further option to Phase 2 to exploit the enormous secondary sulfide resources still left in Cerro Colorado. So let's talk about how we are staging our options and maximize value. Now that we have had a deep dive into the main growth projects, let's talk through when we are planning to deliver these and how we will sequence these projects.
There is a lot of detail in this slide, but crucially, this shows that the Escondida concentrator project will pursue a shorter permit, DIA, followed by a DIA route. Timing and sequence of our growth project are heavily dependent on the permits. They are the critical path. However, as we have explained, we believe the strategy that we have put forward and the controls to mitigate the risk will make us achieve our goals.
While first copper is predicted to be at the start of orange bars, the length shows estimated ramp-up period. Generally, both concentrator projects, Escondida and leaching project at Spence, will take around 12 months. The maturity levels shown are meant to be only indicative of our internal analysis and how advanced each of the growth pathways are. Let's talk a little bit about capital efficiency and particularly about capital intensity for these projects.
So how do we benchmark against our peers, our competitors? Ranking our capital intensity against recently executed projects in Chile and other projects in execution study across the Americas, our projects are actually stacking extremely well, with our midpoint average between $23 per ton, lower than our competitors that are $27 per ton.
We have shown the BHP project as ranges from high to low cases as an indicative of a midpoint. As you can see, even projects with higher capital intensity are demonstrating attractive rate of returns. It's not just a comparison against our peers. It's a highly competitive process that we need to go through the capital allocation framework that we have internally in BHP. We feel confident as our Chilean expansion projects will compete against global options and other commodities.
With our projects in early stage study phases, we expect to use our rigorous process to improve the economics of these projects between now and execution time. So let me wrap up. What do I think you need to take away from this conversation? First of all, we deliver projects safely. Secondly, we have the right strategy with plans that actually are already delivering results.
We have a track record of delivering projects on cost, on schedule. Therefore, we're predictable. Most importantly, we have the right team. Internally in BHP, we have locked-in engineering tier one firms with their A-team from studies all the way to execution with our engineering partners, plus also locking in construction companies to actually deal with our massive pipeline of projects. Finally, we are leveraging our scale at BHP as a global company.
In summary, for these reasons, we believe we're absolutely the trusted hands to execute this exciting range of growth projects that we have both in Escondida and Pampa Norte. I hope that now that you can see that probably the pendulum is shifting to the Americas, we will see you more often. M aybe next time, this presentation will be in Spanish because you will be versed in Spanish, knowing that everything is going to be happening here. So thank you so much. Brandon, please.
So to say thank you, Pedro. Gracias, Pedro. Take my cue. I appreciate there was a significant amount of information. We've probably given you quite a bit to think about based on these last two presentations. But before we move into the Q&A session, I thought it would be useful to just step back for a moment and think through what the key takeaways are from those presentations.
I think first, and the team really focuse d on this, we really do have a high-quality team with the right culture in place, really focused on delivering these growth programs. But importantly, these programs are also coupled with a very significant focus on lifting our operational performance and productivity.
So that focus on operational excellence delivered through the existing operations and extended to the capital is going to be very important. Second, we have worked incredibly hard to assess, and I'm sure you could appreciate that from the slide, a very broad range of options before we could narrow down into the options we want to take forward.
Delivering on these will mean that Escondida maintains its position as the largest copper mine in the world and that our Chilean operations will achieve copper production levels of 1.4 million tons per annum throughout the 2030s. Finally, I wanted to emphasize that we will remain disciplined in our approach, and that is very important, but both on the sequencing of our projects and optimizing them to make sure they continue to be as capital efficient as possible.
Our projects are going to have to compete under the Capital Allocation Framework, which I think you've heard repeated many times over the course of this morning. That is the process that keeps our investment sharp at BHP. Now, the fact that we know that our projects have to beat everybody else's projects to compete for capital keeps the focus, keeps them sharp, keeps them efficient, which is very important.
A s I said right at the beginning in my introduction, we have a great team here in Minerals Americas that are fully committed to delivering this program safely and to delivering the value that I think we all want to see come out of this region a nd it's a really exciting time for us.
Now, there's one thing to run operations. It's something completely different to have an opportunity to build out the program we're presenting to all of you today. So thank you, and we'll take a few questions.