BHP Group (ASX: BHP) on Tuesday reported a steep fall in copper production in the first quarter as bad weather and a fatal accident forced temporary halts at its flagship Escondida mine in Chile.
Operations there were suspended in late September after a worker was killed in an accident while carrying out maintenance work. Production was also disrupted for several weeks at BHP’s Carrapateena copper mine in South Australia after an underground conveyor belt failed.
Copper production fell 19% to 400.7 thousand metric tons (Kt) in the September quarter, missing the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of 423.6 Kt, and lower than the 494 Kt produced last year.
Copper became BHP’s main profit driver for the first time this year as demand for the metal surged from AI data centers.
The red metal and byproducts such as gold and uranium generated $18.19 billion in operating earnings for 2026, surpassing the $14.53 billion from iron ore.
Quarterly iron ore output from BHP’s Western Australia operations came in at 71.9 million metric tons, slightly above the 70.2 Mt produced in the same period last year. The miner is ramping up to produce 305 million tons a year by the end of fiscal year 2028.
Average realised prices for the steelmaking commodity fell 9% to $76.27 per wet metric tons for the quarter ended September 30.
BHP said its full-year guidance remained unchanged across all operations.
The miner increased its estimate for the Olympic Dam copper resource by 2 million tonnes, which equates to nine years of additional production at current levels.
Stage 1 of BHP’s potash project is 87% complete and on track for first production in mid-2027, it said.
Shares of the miner fell as much as 2.4% to A$59.03 per share by 2316 GMT.
(Reporting by Shivangi Lahiri and Rajasik Mukherjee in Bengaluru, Melanie Burton in Melbourne; Editing by Pooja Desai and Sahal Muhammed)
