Codelco of Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, proudly announced that it made nearly $100m profit in the first quarter. But this compares with $2.023bn in the same quarter of 2008. In the current economic climate, making any profit at all in the metals business is regarded as a notable achievement, and the company pointed out that even its relatively modest profit was only achieved by significantly reducing its total costs and expenses by 28 cents/lb to 161.3 cents/lb in the first quarter.

This reduction in costs was still not sufficient to compensate for the fall in prices of copper and various by-products over the last year, said Codelco ceo José Pablo Arellano. The average copper price in the first quarter was 56% down on a year earlier at 155.8 cents/lb, while molybdenum by-product – an important source of income for the company –...