Instrumentation and First Pounds Placed on “Perfect Stockpile” in New Mexico

February 26, 2026 - The team at Freeport’s Chino operation in New Mexico recently reached two important milestones in its effort to build the company’s most advanced leach stockpile to date.

In January, headline instrumentation was installed at the North Lampbright Leach Stockpile, marking a critical step forward. Just days later, the new stockpile – known as the “perfect stockpile” – received its first leachable pounds.

North Lampbright brings together years of operational insight into a design focused on stability, creating and maintaining optimal conditions, and providing early visibility into leaching performance.

To support this objective, the newly installed instrumentation includes geomechanical piezo and pressure cells to monitor solution and thermal conditions within the stockpile, along with oxygen and temperature sensors, pregnant leach solution samplers and additional monitoring tools.

“There were a lot of reasons to build this stockpile, but this was the big one,” said Yancey McCauley, Senior Supervisor, Shared Services Special Projects-Chino. “North Lampbright takes decades of learnings and puts them into play from the first day, with instrumentation that can show us how effectively we’re controlling leach conditions long before that copper starts reporting.”

And getting set up for that kind of data was no small feat. Over the course of seven working days, Freeport employees and contractors installed close to 50 sensors and ran 30,000 feet of cable to connect the sensors back to the instrument pad.

In the days following that installation, the new stockpile saw the arrival of its first leachable pounds. More than 170 truckloads delivered around 46,000 tons of run-of-mine ore to North Lampbright during the first day and night shifts.

Solution is expected to be applied to the stockpile near the end of the first quarter.

In the meantime, the project will see the installation of air blowers, the commissioning of a new communications tower for the instrumentation, and the completion of additional infrastructure, like collection ponds.

Even though the work is far from over, members of New Mexico management were on-hand to commemorate the arrival of those first run-of-mine pounds to North Lampbright.

Later, Randy Ellison, General Manager-New Mexico Operations congratulated his team on the milestone, noting that it isn’t common to see a project of this magnitude come in ahead of schedule, under budget and without any reportable injuries.

“Our future starts today,” Ellison said. “The Perfect Stockpile represents the ingenuity, creativity and sheer determination of all Freeport employees to find better, more effective ways to unlock more value from the work we do. It marks a significant milestone in our efforts to recover every pound of copper from every rock we move.”

Photos (top to bottom): Yancey McCauley shows off an oxygen and temperature sensor, one of the nearly 50 pieces of instrumentation installed; ”Our future starts today,” Randy Ellison, General Manager-New Mexico Operations, said of the team’s work.