‘Truly enormous’: Australia’s biggest copper mine even bigger
An enormous copper deposit in the SA Outback is even larger than first thought with an extra nine years of resource discovered for The Big Australian.
Australia’s top mining company, BHP, has announced that the mineral resource accessible at Olympic Dam in the South Australian outback is about two million tonnes more than previously thought.
As part of its first-quarter financial update, BHP says the mineral resource endowment at Olympic Dam is 88.1 million tonnes of copper, up from 86.2 million tonnes previously reported.
This equates to about nine years of additional production at current levels; Olympic Dam produced 221,000 tonnes of copper in FY26.
BHP dug up approximately two million tonnes of the resource in the 2026 financial year and currently employs around 8,000 South Australians.
The extra resources are available to the company due to a change in BHP’s development planning for Olympic Dam.
The company will use a block cave – a form of bulk underground mining that enables larger volumes of ore to be mined – rather than open cut mining as previously contemplated.
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BHP Copper SA general manager of planning, technical and environment Jim McCluskey said Olympic Dam was “a truly enormous ore body that is critical to BHP’s ambition to grow copper production at South Australia”.
“A significant drilling program over several years has confirmed there is even more scale to Olympic Dam than we previously thought,” McCluskey said.
“Global demand for copper continues to grow at a rapid rate to electrify energy systems, build new digital infrastructure and support growing populations.
“South Australia is in the box seat. This state has world-class copper resources in a stable and supportive jurisdiction, and the skills and expertise to make it happen.”
Despite the positive news about the ore body, copper production at Olympic Dam fell by 16 per cent in the first quarter.
This was due to an underground conveyor belt failure at Carrapateena. A replacement belt has since been installed, and the conveyor belt was operational within seven weeks. It is now operating at full capacity.
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Today’s news comes ahead of the company potentially rapidly upgrading its copper production, with a final investment decision for a smelter upgrade due next year.
It would cost billions of dollars and would expand refinery capacity and increase copper production.
In SA, about 320 ktpa of copper was produced in the 2026 financial year. The company hopes to increase this to 500 ktpa of copper soon as part of the first phase of its mine expansion program.
If the business decides to fund the smelter and refinery expansion at Olympic Dam, it would have the capacity to produce more than one million tonnes equivalent of copper.
“We are building the next phase of growth in copper and potash,” newly appointed CEO Brandon Craig said today.
“We continued to strengthen one of the world’s largest copper portfolios, from funding the Escondida New Concentrator in Chile to growing our resource base and long-term production potential at Copper South Australia, while also expanding our copper growth pipeline across the Americas.”
In October last year, the company announced it would spend $840 million on Olympic Dam expansion programmes, including building a new access tunnel, a more extensive underground train network with six new trains and the installation of an oxygen plant.
The results follow SA Premier Peter Malinauskas saying in May that he wanted a “prenup” with BHP before jointly funding a multibillion-dollar desalination plant alongside the Federal Government.
The Northern Water project was expected to cost $5 billion to construct a 260 megalitre per day desalination plant and a 600km pipeline to transport water from near Whyalla to the state’s Far North to support BHP’s mining activity as well as pastoralists.
In December last year, the state government picked the location of the mega project south of Whyalla.
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