Fundición Paipote

Fundición Hernán Videla Lira, better known as Fundicón Paipote, and formerly known as Fundición Nacional Paipote, is a copper smelter plant 8 km southeast of Copiapó in Chile's Atacama Region.^[1] It operates with a Teniente Converter smelting technology and produces copper anodes made of 99.6% of copper.^[2][3] The smelter is owned by ENAMI and has been paralyzed since February 2024 for a major overhaul costing a total of 1,700 million USD.^[4][5][6] At the time of paralyzation the smelter generated economic losses for ENAMI.^[4] ENAMI has reached out for investors to finance the overhaul offering offsets paid as cathode copper.^[7]

It is classified as a "custom smelter" as it does not depend on ore concentrate from a particular mine nor does it lie next to one.^[2] It was established in 1952 with the stated aim of smelting ores of small and medium-scale mining in the Atacama Region.^[1] Besides copper it also processes ore concentrates of silver and gold.^[1]

In 2015 it had a capacity to produce 84,000 t (93,000 short tons) of copper yearly making it the smallest of Chile's seven active copper smelters at the time.^[2] As of 2025^[update], the overhaul plan consider the smelter to reach a cathode production capacity of 240,000 tons Cu per year.^[6]

The smelter has been criticized for exceeding on certain occasions by far (almost 500%) the sulfur dioxide emission cap set by environmental regulations in 2019 which is 350 μg/m³ SO₂ per hour.^[3] In addition there were accusations in 2021 of doctoring of smelting process data.^[3]

It is named after Hernán Videla Lira (1903–1982), a mining businessman and politician .