Local businessmen buy from Sumitomo the San Cristóbal mine, the largest silver mine in Bolivia

A consortium of Bolivian businessmen announced the acquisition of the shares of the Japanese Sumitomo in San Cristóbal, the largest mine in the payment on Bolivia, located in the southern department of Potosí, an operation that will extend its operations until 2050.

“For Potosí it means extending the useful life of this company, the largest in the world in mining. Expand from 2024, which is the current horizon that this company has, until the year 2050 ″, declared in a press conference Fernando Barbery, spokesman for the business group.

He explained that the consortium is made up of 1,500 businessmen, mostly from Potosí and Santa Cruz, the visible heads being the agroindustrial Fernando Barbery and the miner Orlando Careaga.

The amount of the operation was not specified and no further details of the transaction were provided. The San Cristóbal mining company has not commented on the operation until now.

“There are documents and confidentiality agreements that we cannot fail to respect,” justified the spokesperson.

However, he confirmed that the new owners will respect all the social and labor commitments acquired by Sumitomo since 2008, when it took over ownership of the mine.

“We are going to be faithful and respectful with the agreements and conventions with the communities, with the union, the institutions, with the CSR commitments assumed by the company. They are part of the agreements that are being negotiated in the final phase with the current owners ”, said Barbery.

San Cristóbal is one of the world’s largest open pit zinc, lead and silver deposits. It produces zinc-silver and lead-silver concentrates. The mining project has an investment of US $ 1.8 billion.

“It is the largest mining operation in the history of Bolivia, the sixth largest producer of zinc in the world and the fourth largest producer of silver in the world,” details the institutional page of San Cristóbal.

Due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, in 2020 it was forced to paralyze its operations, which together with the low prices of minerals, caused a 41% drop in its sales, also affecting its profits.