Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) shares rallied Tuesday after the mining giant announced its roadmap for restoring full-scale production at PT Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg operations in Central Papua, Indonesia.
What Happened: The company is planning a careful, phased restart of the Grasberg Block Cave underground mine starting in the second quarter of 2026. This follows a mud rush incident last September that forced operations offline. The good news? Production from two unaffected mines—the Deep Mill Level Zone and Big Gossan underground operations—already came back online in late October.
CEO Kathleen Quirk struck a measured tone, explaining that the company has studied what went wrong and is implementing multiple initiatives to prevent a repeat. Safety, she emphasized, will be the absolute priority as they bring the mine back up to speed.
The Production Picture: For 2026, Freeport expects production from the Grasberg district to look similar to 2025 levels—approximately 1 billion pounds of copper and 900,000 ounces of gold. But things get more interesting after that. Production is expected to ramp throughout 2026 and 2027, reaching an average annual output of about 1.6 billion pounds of copper and 1.3 million ounces of gold from 2027 through 2029.
The company held a conference call with analysts to walk through the incident details, explain the operating plan going forward, and provide a broader update on its global business.
FCX Price Action: At the time of writing, Freeport shares were trading 4.46% higher at $40.74.
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