Nexans, the worldwide cable industry major, has been awarded a major contract to supply power, control and instrumentation cables from its specialised POWERMINE range for Chinalco’s new Mount Toromocho open pit copper mine in Peru. In cooperation with Anixter USA, its distribution partner for this project, Nexans is providing more than1,200 km of cables to the Aker/Jacobs Engineering turnkey EPC contractor for the mine, which is scheduled to begin production in 2012. Nexans said that it has developed its comprehensive POWERMINE range of customised cable solutions to ensure optimum safety, reliability and efficiency for mining operations. At Toromocho, Nexans cables will power surface mine equipment such as conveyor belts, lighting, power for various buildings, crushers, a maintenance facility, the concentrator and other surface operations.

For this contract, the Nexans facility in Canada is supplying 1,000 km of power, control and instrumentation cables of the type THNN, XHHW, Ultra-VN, Ultrex-XL and Firex. These cables comply with USA Type National Electric Code (NEC) specifications. Nexans Chile is supplying 200 km of 5 kV and 15 kV medium-voltage (MV) flexible rubber jacketed power cables. “This contract has been a great success and enables Nexans to secure a stronger foothold in the very active South American mining market. The key to our success in the face of stiff competition was the excellent cooperation with Anixter, so that together we demonstrated our ability to provide the EPC with a complete, high quality, cost-effective solution that met all their needs for both the fixed and mobile cable requirements,” said Gilbert Guerrero, Regional Sales Manager, Cross-Sales, Nexans North America. “A further advantage was the capability delivered by the Nexans teams based in Chile, since this project called for special packaging methods in order to ensure the secure and safe delivery of cables to a very remote site in good condition and ready to be installed and energised.” Delivery of Nexans cables to the Toromocho mine project began in August 2011 with completion expected by year end. Toromocho is being developed in a remote location, 130 km from Lima, at an elevation of 4,600 m. The mine is estimated to have recoverable reserves of 5.7 Mt of copper, 148,000 t of molybdenum and 188 Moz of silver, giving a life of over 25 years at an average production rate of 210,000 t/y of copper.