GENERAL MANAGER - SOUTH AMERICA, HOFMANN ENGINEERING
"We have an ambitious plan to achieve significant milestones this year in our Chilean operation; expand the workshop and commission our new state of the art machinery, enabling us to manufacture HPGRs and other critical components locally in Chile."
"We have a hovercraft that moves on top of the tailings, allowing us to reduce the tailings ponds and evaporation. This is critical for us because our main bottleneck in terms of production today is water availability."
"We are now well on our way down that path with active exploration ongoing at both our projects, and we can expect to announce drill results from both Santa Cecilia and Margarita starting in the last half of 2023."
COUNTRY DIVISION MANAGER – PROCESS INDUSTRIES, AND MINING LEAD ABB
"Tools such as satellite communication technologies, fiber optics, and 5G have helped to implement remote work on a massive scale. The main mining clients, including Teck, are already operating remotely."
"As one of the largest land holders in the junior mining sector, Lithium Chile is encouraged by the recent announcement by President Boric in respect to the future of lithium in Chile."
"The industry is relatively conservative. Although there have been some excellent improvements in productivity, I would say that a global lack of qualified labor has driven the shift from mechanical to automated drills."
Despite the challenges, Latin America has several opportunities: Its green energy mix paves the way for the energy transition. In this journey, the chemical and petrochemical industries will be critical, leveraging emerging technologies like AI to enhance their operations.