28 March 2025
RME contributes to Austmine's Chile Mining Market panel
RME’s Regional Sales Excellence Manager in Chile, Natalia Burgos, participated in Ausmine’s recent panel discussion sharing important lessons from RME’s market entry into Chile, and insights on what drives our Chilean Customers’ decision-making.
The unopposed largest copper producer worldwide, Chile represented approximately 24 per cent of global production in 2024. It’s production of other metals and minerals such as gold, molybdenum, and silver also rank amongst the highest in the world, and it’s annual output of lithium has nearly doubled in the past decade.
It’s a mature, competitive market relentlessly focused on innovations that improve productivity and safety.
Austmine Chile mining market overview
We were delighted to be invited to join Austmine for their recent overview of mining in Chile.
Natalia Burgos, the RME Regional Sales Excellence Manager in Chile, joined a panel discussion with Kurt Benavides of Inexlink, Marcelo Salas of Plusmining and Paulina Downey from Trade and Investment Queensland, chaired by Robert Trzebski from Ausmine.
Natalia shared valuable lessons from RME’s market entry into Chile, including the benefits of direct Customer engagement, and the criticality of a local presence that literally and figuratively speaks the language.
“Our entry strategy was based on direct Customer engagement… It ensured that our Customers received the highest levels of technical support, safety assurance and operational excellence – directly from our team.”
The panel was also curious to learn how RME’s innovations translated to a mining market such as Chile’s, characterised as mature and highly competitive.
"RME’s innovations and solutions are specifically designed to enhance productivity and safety in grinding mill maintenance, which is a critical bottleneck in minerals processing. Chile’s mining industry has a strong focus on productivity and safety – it’s one of the most mature markets in mining… they’re looking to expand and use the new technologies… robotic solutions like THUNDERBOLT SKYWAY."
You can view the panel discussion by clicking on the video thumbnail above.
RME’s Chilean roots
RME’s history in South America dates to 1996 with the export of the first RUSSELL Mill Relining Machine to the region. With a steady stream of technology installations in the years that followed, RME established a direct presence in the region – with a regional service centre in Chile – in 2004 to better serve our growing Customer base.
Today, RME has five dedicated RME Regional Service Centres in Latin America and our equipment operates on 77 Latin American mine sites across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama and Peru.
“RME's commitment to serving Latin American Customers is evident in our significant investment in Chilean facilities. We offer world-class asset support, including the ability to deliver multiple major services simultaneously and efficiently manage OEM-certified parts from our Santiago warehouse, ensuring minimal delivery times and costs for our Customers."
Chile, along with the entire Latin American region, continues to work at the forefront of advanced safety and automation technology adoption with growing interest and investment in the world’s best safety technologies.
“RME’s Latin American Customers have been early adopters of products from our world-first, award-winning RME Advanced Technology Mill Relining System that ultimately allows mill operators to relocate crews to work outside the mill during liner exchange and achieve step-change improvements in safety and relining speed.”
Watch the Austmine panel discussion
You can view the panel discussion by clicking on the video thumbnail above.
Contacting our team
RME's on-the-ground team offers extensive experience and deep expertise in supporting copper producers and mineral processing operations across the region. Connect with our in-region sales and support centres to discover how we can work together to optimise your mill relining operations, enhancing safety and mill availability.
References
https://plusmining.com/en/2025/02/24/chiles-share-in-the-global-copper-market-drops-from-30-to-24-in-a-decade/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/254845/copper-production-of-chile/
https://www.statista.com/topics/6550/mining-in-chile/#topicOverview
If you'd like find out more about RME Chile, or continue these conversations, please reach out to RME.
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