Industrial and commercial South AmericaPeck, Annie S. (Annie Smith)
History
Industrial and commercial South America
Peck, Annie S. (Annie Smith)
South America; South America -- Economic conditions -- 1918-
The Braden Copper Company, another Guggenheim interest, owns about
2300 acres in the Province of O’Higgins. They have a concentrator, a
smelting and converting plant, a hydro-electric power plant with 800
kilowatt capacity and an electric and a steam railway; the latter,
43 miles long, connecting the property with Rancagua, which is on
the Central Railway 43 miles southeast of Santiago. The ore is of
concentrating copper, a sulphide in brecciated andesite, around an
extinct volcano. It runs about 2.5 per cent, with an earlier production
cost in New York of 6.5 cents a pound, but now higher. In 1916,
1500-1800 men were employed. The plant, recently enlarged, is not
working to capacity. In 1917, 64,000,000 pounds were produced, over
77,000,000 in 1918, with diminishing demand, 40,000,000 in 1920.
Another American syndicate has acquired the Tamaya Copper Mines in
the Province of Coquimbo between Ovalle and Tongoy, the latter, a
minor port 27 miles south of Coquimbo, sheltered from north winds,
with smelting works in the place. With an efficient pumping plant and
other improvements installed, the mines are expected to yield large
production. Other companies, native, British, and French are engaged in
copper mining at Carrizal and elsewhere.
=Iron.= Coquimbo, a Province with local importance for agriculture, is
notable for its deposits of iron ore, said to amount to a billion tons.
Only one of these has been worked, a deposit located at Tofo, about
four miles east of Cruz Grande, and 30 north of the city of Coquimbo.
This property was leased in 1913 by the Bethlehem Steel Company from a
French Company which had developed the mine to some extent and produced
ore. The ore appearing as the top of a large hill will be mined by
electric shovels and transported by an electric railway to docks at
Cruz Grande. The amount of ore is very large though with exact tonnage
undetermined. The Company is still exploring the deposit at depth.
The mines and railway are completely equipped. At Cruz Grande a basin
dock has been constructed with large storage pockets into which the ore
will be discharged from the railway cars, and from which it will go
directly into the vessels. The Steel Company is constructing steamers
of 20,000 tons to carry the ore to the United States for use in their
furnaces. The ore is very pure averaging about 67.50 per cent iron.
It is a dense ore reddish black in color, a mixture of magnetite and
hematite.
The French Company formerly controlling Tofo had erected a steel plant
at Corral intending to transport the ore thither. There is no iron ore
near there and the plant is not operating.
Of the other deposits in Coquimbo and farther north some are of
considerable size, but none is located so near the coast as Tofo and
none has been developed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account