Copper output in Chile, the world’s largest producer of the metal, fell 9.4% year-on-year in July hit by severe storms that struck mining operation areas, statistics agency INE said on Monday.
Chile saw its copper output down at 403,424 metric tons from 445,322 tons on the same month a year earlier.
The decline in copper mining and processing was due to “unfavorable weather conditions in the northern part of the country, which hindered the normal production process,” INE said in a report.
In addition, maintenance work was carried out at major sites in the key mining sector during July, the agency added.
Manufacturing production in the Andean nation was also down 4.9% in the month on a yearly basis, the agency said in a separate report, a sharper decline from the 3.2% drop registered in June.
(Reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero, Natalia Ramos and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez. Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
