ENAMI (Chile)
Empresa Nacional de Minería (National Mining Enterprise) better known by its acronym ENAMI is a Chilean state-owned mining company based in Santiago. Its business involve purchasing ore, primarily from small and medium-scale mining,[2] processing it is and selling the processed product, usually copper, in the international market.[2] ENAMI has also its role in providing technical and financial assistance for mining in its target segment.[2] Its board president is the Chilean minister of mining, who since August 2023 is Aurora Williams.[3][4] ENAMI was created in 1960 by the merger of Caja de Crédito y Fomento Minero (CACREMI) and Empresa Nacional de Fundiciones.[5] The company is aimed to help small-scale miners by among other things buying ore in quantities that are otherwise too small to be traded in the international market.[5] The company also helps stabilizing prices for the products of medium and small-scale miners.[5] It has most of its offices and smelters and other industries in the northern half och Chile, from Rancagua to the Arica in the far north.[6] South of Rancagua the only office of ENAMI lies in Concepción.[6] Artisan miners known as pirquineros usually sell their output directly to ENAMI.[7] The number of small-scale miners in charge of a mining operation (each typically having a workforce of five to six miners), including pirquineros, registered at ENAMI has been in the span 2300 to 750 in the 2011–2021 period.[5] Thus, by one estimate in the 2000s to the 2020s in years of high mining activity up to 14,000 miners would have been employed in small-scale mining in Chile.[5] As of 2019 the number of small-scale miners working on copper mining was about twenty times larger than those working on other metals like gold or silver.[5] ENAMI is considered a key component to fight illegal mining in Chile as it deprives organized crime from taking the role of being the main buyers of the products of small-scale miners as it happens in other Latin American countries.[8] AssetsENAMI owns 10% of the copper mine Carmen de Andacollo in which Teck Resources owns the remaining 90% of the shares.[9] Planta Delta near the city Ovalle is owned and operated by ENAMI. It processes the ore from the adjacent Panulcillo copper mines and is a point of delivery for other small-scale miners in the region.[10] The custom copper smelter Fundición Paipote next to Copiapó is owned ENAMI. It has been paralyzed since February 2024 for a major overhaul.[11][12] At the time of paralyzation the smelter generated economic losses for ENAMI.[11] In August 2025 ENAMI announced a partnership with Rio Tinto to carry out the lithium brine mining project Salares Altoandinos in Atacama Region.[13] Former assetsIn 2024 ENAMI sold its 10% shares in Quebrada Blanca to state-owned Codelco.[14][15][16] Prior to this sale Quebrada Blanca was ENAMI's main asset, and the sale was aimed to provide financial capital for the company and pay-off some of ENAMI's debts.[16] The terms of the purchase were criticized by Sociedad Nacional de Minería as lacking transparency.[16] Other critics also point out that shares were sold at prices below what private companies would have paid and that the sale is part of a pattern of empoverishment of ENAMI at the cost of benefitting Codelco.[16] In late 1977 ENAMI sold Los Bronces mine, then known as Disputada, to Exxon for 93 million US$.[17] Exxon later sold the mine to Anglo American plc for 1300 million US$.[17] ENAMI owned the copper smelter Fundición Ventanas in Valparaíso Region from its establishment in 1964 to 2005 when it was sold to Codelco.[18] This smelter closed in 2023 due to environmental issues.[18][19] In 1964 ENAMI became the main financier, through loans –and the direct ownership of 20%– of a new small mining mining company that sought to mine copper and gold from Cutter Cove near the Strait of Magellan.[20] ENAMI then gained full ownership of the mine in 1970 but ore extraction that had just begun 1971 halted in 1974 as the mine went at loss.[21] The ore contrate produced in this period was transported north in ships of the Chilean Navy to the ENAMI smelter of Fundición Ventanas near Valparaíso.[21] The unusually large loans in the 1960s to finance the emerging mining company caused surprise in Sociedad Nacional de Minería.[20] References
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