This statistic provides a country-by-country breakdown of copper mine production from 2010 to 2017. In 2017, Peru produced 2.39 million metric tons of copper. The ten leading countries in world copper production as of 2017 were Chile, Peru, China, the United States, Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Canada.
Major countries in world copper production
Chile, the world's leading copper producer by far, produced an estimated 5.33 million metric tons of copper in 2017. In second place is Peru, with an estimated copper mine production of 2.39 million metric tons in 2017. The world's third-largest copper producer from mines is China. In 2017, China produced an estimated 1.86 million metric tons of copper from mines, which is over three times less than Chile's production.
The largest copper mines in the world are located primarily in the largest copper producing nations in the world. As Chile is the world's largest producer of copper, it is not surprising that three of the world's ten largest copper mines based on capacity are located there. At the top of the list is the Escondida mine, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile's Antofagasta Region. It had a capacity of some 1.37 million metric tons of copper in 2018, which is nearly twice the capacity of the world's second-largest copper mine, located in Indonesia.
