Copper major Freeport-McMoRan reported its copper leaching technology initiatives added 214 million pounds, or about 97,000 tonnes, of copper output to its 2025 group total. It produced 3.4 billion pounds of copper at unit net cash costs of $1.65/lb in 2025.
The US company said 2026 Q1 incremental leach copper production was 54Mlb or circa-24,500t.
It is shooting for 2026 copper leaching gains of 300Mlb and up to 800Mlb by 2030, with spending on the program of up to US$1 billion. Freeport said the program was targeting copper in stockpiles, unrecoverable with standard leach method, with “precision operating techniques”.
“[The company] is incorporating new applications, technologies and data analytics into its leaching processes across its United States and South America operations,” Freeport said. It had started large-scale testing of internally developed additives and also lab tests of other inhouse additives that were showing encouraging results.
“[The company] is deploying large-scale testing of an internally developed additive product at its Morenci operations with encouraging early results,” Freeport said. “In addition, [Freeport] has identified other possible additives with strong potential and plans to apply heat to its stockpiles together with the new additives to further enhance recoveries.
“Continued success with these initiatives would be expected to contribute to additions in recoverable copper in leach stockpiles and favourably impact average unit net cash costs.
“In addition to its innovative leaching initiatives, [Freeport] is pursuing opportunities to leverage new technologies and analytic tools in automation and operating practices with a goal of improving operating efficiencies and reducing costs and capital intensity of its current operations and future development projects.
“[Freeport] believes these leaching and technology initiatives are particularly important to its US operations, which have lower ore grades.”
Freeport meanwhile quantified operational impacts of last year’s Grasberg block cave mud rush incident which killed seven people.
The 800,000 tonnes of wet mud that entered the underground mine from a surface pit took out 5% of the mine’s 180km of drifts and 14% of its loader fleet. It also damaged rail, ore chutes, ore railcars, a locomotive and some rockbreakers. Freeport said $73 million of asset impairments included $18 million for fixed and mobile equipment and $42 million for chute galleries.
It recommenced production from the unaffected Deep MLZ and Big Gossan mines in late October 2025 and expects to begin a phased restart of the Grasberg block cave this quarter.
