Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA (SQM)

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Our Resources
In the Atacama Desert, located between Chile’s first and second regions, SQM has exclusive access to the world’s best and largest reserves of caliche ore and brines. It possesses the most extensive reserves of iodine and nitrate, as well as the highest concentrations of lithium and potassium on record. In addition, in 2017 the Company began diversifying geographically by acquiring new resources to extract lithium from spodumene in Western Australia (in partnership with Kidman Resources).

Caliche Ore
Brines
The word “caliche” comes from the local indigenous language, quechua, which originally called this mineral “cachi”, meaning salt. The term then became “calchi”, and finally “caliche”, as it is known today.

The caliche ore in northern Chile contains the largest known deposits of nitrates and iodine on the planet and is the only commercially exploitable source of natural nitrate in the world.

From our deposits of caliche ore, we produce a wide variety of nitrate-based products used as specialty plant nutrients and for industrial applications, along with iodine and iodine derivatives.

Caliche ore is found beneath a layer of inert material and can measure between twenty centimeters and five meters thick.

https://www.sqm.com/en/acerca-de-sqm/recursos-naturales/nuestros-recursos/