SandLix™ reaches major milestone on the path towards enabling more sustainable copper production

Two major trends are set to drive the demand for copper in the coming decades: the urgent need to decarbonise the global economy (the energy transition), and the drive for improved living standards for a growing and urbanising population.

At present, the copper industry is experiencing the depletion of existing orebodies and many of the world’s remaining copper deposits are situated in regions that make treatment more difficult, with significant water scarcity and pressures to reduce energy consumption.

SandLix™, Anglo American’s novel heap leach process, directly addresses some of the most pressing challenges facing the industry when it comes to future copper supply.

Testing advances positively

Since 2018, the objective for SandLix™ has been clear: accelerate the commercial deployment of this breakthrough technology. Through a methodical, risk-adjusted scale-up strategy, SandLix™ has been proven to deliver exceptional results across diverse ore types, while maintaining performance as it scales from laboratory testing to pilot scale.

The journey towards commercialisation started with successful laboratory trials and the development of a dynamic model to help understand the interaction of physics and chemistry of the SandLix™ process. The trials achieved outstanding extraction rates of 80% to 90% within 250 days across multiple copper ores, both from Anglo American and third parties.

The next step was to scale up the technology for real-world testing. This involved the development of a Containerised Heap Leach Reactor (CHLR) – 400 times larger than laboratory testing scale – to enable the testing of 50-tonne samples, validating chemistry and heat transfer at commercial lift heights.

These pilot columns started in South Africa in 2024, testing material from our global operations, and will also be set up in Chile to test a variety of ores and conditions. By mid-2025, the first pilot column reached completion and demonstrated excellent results that confirmed scalability of the technology to commercial lift heights.

A significant milestone

In the third quarter of 2025, SandLix™ reached a significant milestone in its development journey, with the testing of a 15,000-tonne heap prototype at our El Soldado copper mine in Chile coming to completion. This marked a major step towards commercial-scale production, successfully demonstrating commercial-scale fluid and heat dynamics with precise control, and confirming geotechnical design criteria.