South Australia’s mineral resource production for the 2020 calendar year breached the $7B mark, up from $6.9B in 2019, and the second-highest year on record behind the $7.312B produced in 2014.
According to the LEAD newspaper, Copper continued to be the state’s largest contributor in 2020 with $2.429B worth of production. “This included $1.35B in the second half of the year, which is the highest six-month copper total in the state’s history and bodes well for another strong year in 2021.”
This growth has coincided with a “25% increase in copper production at BHP’s Olympic Dam for the nine months to March 2021. South Australia’s largest copper mine produced 100,000 tonnes of copper in the second half of 2020 and a further 55,000 tonnes in the March quarter this year, the highest quarterly production at Olympic Dam in the past five years.”
“South Australia’s next largest copper producer, Oz Minerals, also reported significant increases in copper production for the second half of 2020 at its South Australian mines at Prominent Hill and Carrapateena. This was mainly due to the ramping up of production at Carrapateena, which began commercial operation in late 2019.”
South Australia Chamber of Mining and Energy (SACOME) CEO Rebecca Knol, said the 2020-21 State Budget predicted royalties to be $301M this financial year, but it was not yet known how the latest production figures would impact this figure.
“During 2020, the resources sector demonstrated both its resilience as a sector and its importance to the state’s economy,” she said.
