China’s Zijin Mining plans to invest more than US$10 billion in project development and asset acquisitions in Latin America, with a focus on advancing three major projects — La Arena, Rio Blanco and Tres Quebradas (3Q) — leveraging the region’s resource advantages to strengthen its integrated copper, gold and lithium industrial chain.

Over the past decade, Zijin has built an aggressive and large-scale mining investment portfolio in South America, with operations covering Colombia, Suriname, Guyana and other countries, helping the company rank among the world’s top five copper producers and China’s largest gold producer.

At the 2026 Peru International Copper Mining Exhibition held in Lima in late April, Zijin Mining’s vice president of operations, James Wang Chun, said that as a state-affiliated enterprise, Peru is the core strategic hub of Zijin’s Latin America layout.

La Arena Project

Zijin plans to spend about US$1.5 billion to extend the mining life of the La Arena copper-gold mine in Peru’s La Libertad region by about 20 years.

After the Phase II expansion of the open-pit mine, the production period will go beyond the 2028 deadline set in the existing environmental impact assessment.

Relying on the La Arena sulfide ore project, Zijin will develop Phase II of the deposit to create world-class mine capacity that matches growing global copper demand.

The project is currently in the basic design and engineering planning stage, with comparative selection of supporting infrastructure options being carried out in parallel.

According to Zijin’s annual report data, La Arena produced 1.3 tons of gold in 2025 and plans to produce 2 tons in 2026; after Phase II reaches full production, it is expected to achieve annual output of 100,000 tons of copper and 3.8 tons of gold.

In 2024, Zijin acquired the mine from Pan American Silver on a wholly owned basis. Under the agreement between the two parties, Zijin must pay an additional US$50 million consideration after La Arena Phase II achieves commercial production.

The project faces many local challenges in Peru: low approval efficiency, cumbersome administrative procedures, frequent community conflicts and unstable policy regulation. The global mining environment is favorable for investment, but local execution capacity will directly determine whether potential opportunities can be translated into actual investment.

Rio Blanco Project

Even amid institutional and policy uncertainty in Peru, Zijin remains bullish on the local market in the long term and continues to advance construction of the Rio Blanco copper-molybdenum mine in the Piura region. The deposit ranks among the world’s top ten undeveloped copper mines by resource size.

The project is preparing for full-scale construction and plans to build an open-pit mine. It has proven copper resources of 11.32 million tons at an average grade of 0.47%, and molybdenum resources of 458,000 tons at an average grade of 0.02%, with potential for further exploration and reserve growth.

The project is led by Zijin’s local subsidiary Rio Blanco Copper, in which Zijin holds 51%; the consortium partners also include Tongling Nonferrous Metals (35%) and a Xiamen state-owned enterprise (14%).

Tres Quebradas (3Q) Lithium Project

In Argentina, Zijin is focusing on the new energy sector, using the 3Q salt lake lithium project to supply key raw materials for the power battery industry. The project is located in Catamarca Province, with a total investment of US$600 million, and was put into production in 2025.

The Phase I design of the 3Q project has an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent; through process technology upgrades, the company plans to raise capacity to 30,000 tons per year in 2026, and has planned a Phase III expansion to ultimately reach 50,000 tons per year.

The project uses evaporation pond technology to extract lithium from brine at the Laguna Verde salt lake, and is operated locally by Liex, a wholly owned subsidiary of Zijin. The approved mining period runs until 2043.