When America gets back to work after the COVID-19 crisis, infrastructure projects – and the products of mining that make them possible – will be key to our economic recovery.
Copper is a versatile metal that is essential to construction: a critical metal for wire, plumbing and hardware. It has the best electrical and thermal heat conductivity of any industrial metal and is vital to energy efficiency. Copper’s flexibility, conformity, thermal and electric conductivity, and resistance to corrosion make it an ideal industrial metal for power cables, trolley wire and switches in transit systems.
Fortunately, copper is a mineral we have in plentiful supply here in the United States. Freeport-McMoRan is a leading international mining company with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, that mines copper, gold and molybdenum. In North America, Freeport-McMoRan operates seven open-pit copper mines in Arizona and New Mexico. The company is one of the world’s largest publicly traded copper producers. It produced about 1.44 million metric tons of copper in 2019.
Copper and copper alloy products are essential resources across the vital industries that keep our nation moving forward.