Anglo American is moving at pace to shore up its ties with Chile’s state-owned copper giant Codelco as the deadline for its merger with Teck Resources looms, piling pressure on the group to make good on copper-focused growth plans.The deal comes as Anglo has promised investors a portfolio that is laser-focused on copper, having sold off its platinum, nickel and coal assets over the past two years. It hopes to conclude the merger, which will offer Anglo shareholders 70% exposure to the metal, by December.The stakes to secure more copper are mounting as the price of platinum and coal soar on robust demand and potential supply pressures, raising tough questions about the group’s weight-loss strategy.(Dorothy Kgosi) The miner’s operations in Chile are a key part of the pitch to investors, with competitors such as BHP hungrily eyeing the company’s underground resources in the country, where most of the world’s copper is found.On Wednesday Anglo announced that it had sketched a definitive agreement to jointly operate the Los Bronces and Andina mines with Codelco, paving the road to jointly develop one of the world’s five biggest copper assets.Los Bronces, owned by Anglo, and Andina, owned by Codelco, are two parts of a copper deposit whose combined output is among the world’s top 10 producers.The joint mine plan, which has been in the works for more than a year, would add 120,000oz to this combined output and increase the operations’ combined value by an estimated $5bn, placing it among the five biggest copper operations globally.In a statement on Wednesday, Anglo CEO Duncan Wanblad unabashedly called it “one of the most significant copper adjacency opportunities in the world”, saying: “adjacencies such as these are rare and they highlight the role that responsible, partnership-led development can play”.He called for the “timely receipt” of the outstanding permits, which will “allow us to begin delivering the additional volume and value that we are targeting”.For the Chilean government, the closer ties with Anglo take it a step further to its ambition of lifting national output to 6-million tonnes a year by 2030, said Wanblad.Bloomberg reported earlier this year that the country’s output is expected to be 5.5-million to 5.7-million tonnes this year. Expanding it requires substantial investment in infrastructure such as water pumping systems, given the region’s water scarcity.A recent PwC report warned that water shortages and droughts that are already slowing down production in Chile are likely to worsen over the coming decade, threatening global supplies of the metal.Codelco chair Bernardo Fontaine said the agreement with Anglo would allow it to develop one of its leading copper districts more efficiently and make better use of existing infrastructure.After receiving the green light from competition authorities, the plan now hinges on Chile’s environmental permitting process as well as “other customary conditions to final implementation”, which are only expected by 2030.In recent weeks, copper prices, which were trading around record highs as recently as early June, have taken a steep tumble amid fears of interest rate hikes and lasting inflation stemming from the Iran war.Shares in Anglo have felt the pressure of rate hike expectations, falling by more than 11% in the past week. However, they are still trading more than 60% higher than they were a year ago.Demand for copper is expected to grow more than 40% by 2040, placing the metal at the centre of dealmaking in the mining sector.A report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development estimates that $250bn in investment is needed over the next five years to unlock sufficient copper supply to meet demand, which is being fuelled by rapid data centre growth, electric car production and industrialisation.Business Day