Blasting, explosives and blasthole drilling (San Juan)
The rock is blasted every day of the mine's life — that is why blasting is the most perpetual niche in San Juan mining: the largest copper project declares more than 70 years of mine life. Today, calibrated for gold, the drill and blast package is small; when the copper porphyries reach steady state, San Juan will blast 450-585 million tonnes of rock a year requiring 100-175 thousand tonnes of explosive — against 26,000 tonnes a year of installed capacity in the province, which is what the manufacturer's parent declares in the annual report it files with the Chilean regulator. The explosive itself is in few hands —three global companies cover nearly all of it— and the door is a national authorisation that nobody can count from outside, because the agency does not publish who holds it. But the jump opens up everything around the explosive without touching it: the blastholes —Hualilán already tendered them apart from the explosive—, dangerous goods transport and the works for the new plants the demand will require.
Emerging and perpetual: small today, it multiplies when copper enters production, and after that it does not switch off — the largest project declares more than 70 years of mine life. ⚠️ The jump has no date of its own: it hangs on three investment decisions that have not yet been taken, and all three have slipped in the last twelve months.
On this page
What the market is made of
The TAM is activity across the whole life of the mine, not capturable spoils. The explosive, the initiation and the integral blasting contract —plus the investment and operation of the 2-3 on-site plants the wave requires— are shielded by the national authorisation within the global oligopoly: that is captive. Your real gap is everything around the explosive without touching it —blasthole drilling, dangerous goods transport, the plants' civil works and blast monitoring—: the segment addressable by a local contractor.
~70-75% of the TAM (today ~USD 18-22 M; full wave ~USD 145-160 M/yr): the explosive, the initiation and the integral contract —the explosive, the initiation and the service, all together— stay with the installed global oligopoly — national authorisation to touch explosive, capital, safety record, BHP/Lundin/Glencore panels; includes the future on-site plants (investment and operation borne by the explosives company)
Today ~USD 8-12 M; full wave ~USD 50-70 M/yr: blasthole drilling (half the SAM), dangerous goods transport, civil works/erection of plants and magazines, vibration monitoring, maintenance of MMUs/drill rigs. The Local Mining Development Law (80/60 + RE.PRO.MIN, still unregulated and with no legal deadline) enlarges it — with the 'competitive market terms' valve as the real limit
USD 3-10 M/yr, and the arithmetic is in plain sight: the smallest real step is the one Hualilán has already paid for —a 24-month blasthole contract, of the order of USD 3 to 8 million a year at the scale of a gold mine— and the second is the dedicated explosives transport of one mine, USD 1 to 3 million a year. The band comes from adding one of the two, not both. And the precedent behind it was won by a company the provincial press presents as being from San Juan. estim
Who really pays?
In this trade the one who signs the cheque is almost never the mine: in two of the four doors the client is the explosives company itself. It is worth knowing which one is yours before you bid:
Hualilán opened the door: Golden Mining S.A. (Challenger Gold) contracted a drilling contractor for 24 months for blastholes, separately from the explosives supplier, mobilised Oct-2025.
A global explosives supplier already outsources the freight of nitrate and high explosives to Veladero; at full wave 100-175 kt/year move from Salta (El Galpón) and the on-site plants. The door is the global, not the operator.
A global explosives supplier built Campanario (USD 3.5 M, 2014); the 2-3 new plants (USD 10-30 M each, 2027-2033) are built by the globals with their own capital and pass foundations, buildings and magazines down to the San Juan contractor via RE.PRO.MIN.
The operator tenders the multi-year integral service; the drill and blast contracts of the 3 porphyries are tendered 2027-2029 and lock in the winner for decades. It is the door that is NOT yours — naming it steers you not to touch it.
Which projects move this demand
The largest mining project in Argentine history by announced investment, and, according to the operator…
see the project →Leach-based copper cathode project in Calingasta (San Juan). Company/press figures (probable, outside the resolution)…
see the project →Phase 1 of one of Argentina's two largest undeveloped copper deposits, alongside Vicuña: a resource declared by Glencore of ~6,000 Mt @ 0.43% Cu, 2.2 g/t Ag and 130 g/t Mo…
see the project →Engineering, construction, operation and maintenance of new leach pads (phases 8 and 9) at Veladero Mine, to sustain gold production and exports…
see the project →Reactivation and deepening of the Gualcamayo gold and silver mine (San Juan): the 'Deep Carbonates (DCP)' project extends the mine life toward the sulfide orebody at depth…
see the project →When the window opens
The pre-stripping of a porphyry moves hundreds of millions of tonnes two or three years before the first pound of copper, and the contract is signed months before the first blast. That step is dated and the three dates have moved: Los Azules picks its engineering, procurement and construction management contractor in the fourth quarter of 2026 and only decides its investment in mid-2027, not in 2026; Hualilán goes back into production in early 2029, with construction in the second half of 2027; and El Pachón still has no resolution thirteen months after filing under the large-investment regime. Pre-stripping starts behind those three decisions. ⚠️ And that the contract is signed months before the first blast is our own reading from a single precedent: Hualilán mobilised in October 2025 to blast in November. These four numbers give the warning.
See the evidence
See the evidence
See the evidence
75% of the jump is copper; a delay shifts the TAM (the rock is blasted anyway, later) but does not destroy it. The gold core does not depend on any investment decision. Schedule risk concentrated in 2027-2029 (the pre-stripping).
It only bites before the investment decision: it postpones open pits by years. In production, blasting is operating expenditure on a sunk cost of USD 3,000-9,700 M estim — it is not cut by cycles.
See the evidence
Access blockades: in Apr-2026 the Chilecito judge ordered a 30-day suspension of Vicuña's activities and a block on transit through La Rioja territory for failure to file the environmental study in that province, and operations continued via the alternative Iglesia route prob — it was a court order over an administrative breach, not a social protest action.
See the evidence
Electronic initiation/precision blasting reduce the powder factor by 10-20% — gradual erosion offset by the growth of the rock moved. It compresses the margin, it doesn't break the niche.
See the remaining risk
Low in the service (the national authorisation, the crews and the dangerous goods logistics make it necessarily local) and in internalisation (miners almost never blast on their own.
See the evidence
The opportunity in depth
The opportunity in depth
Target production blasthole drilling: it is the reachable large contract without touching explosive, and it already has a precedent in the province — Hualilán contracted the blastholes for 24 months, separately from the explosives supplier. Each porphyry will need between six and twelve production drill rigs from the pre-stripping onwards.
Nitrate and dangerous goods transport, which is the category explosives fall into: it is already outsourced today and the flow multiplies with the wave. It is a fleet financeable against a multi-year contract. ⚠️ We did not identify a specialised local operator among the members of the two chambers we reviewed, and none publishes whether it holds that authorisation.
The civil works and erection of the new plants and the magazines, and the vibration and fragmentation monitoring that every environmental impact declaration requires. ⭐ And there is one case already on the table: a San Juan company and a global announced in August 2026 an ANFO plant in Jáchal, with production scheduled for December 2026, on the site of the former Fabricaciones Militares.
See the detail
When you get paid, and what blocks it
already in
split
Serves Veladero (supply + outsourced transport of nitrate/high explosives) and Gualcamayo; blasting contract at Hualilán (Oct-2025, with a drilling contractor on blastholes); domiciled in San Juan capital
The only emulsion plant we identified in the province: Campanario, in the Iglesia department, 26,000 t/yr verif, less than 200 km from the mines; integral service since 2007 and the plant operating since 2014, with 40 people, all of them from San Juan. ⚠️ And a label worth correcting: what comes out of there is not explosive, it is non-explosive bulk emulsion matrix, which becomes explosive only in the hole, inside the mobile manufacturing unit.
Operations base inside Veladero verif; its own nitrate from El Galpón, Salta (75,000 t/year) verif; own-brand detonators
24-month blasthole-drilling contract at Hualilán (Nov-2025); works with one of the global explosives suppliers, with which it announced in August 2026 an ANFO plant on the former Fabricaciones Militares site in Jáchal; the provincial press presents it as «la empresa sanjuanina» prob; an unbundled model replicable in the porphyries
See the remaining 2 players
Present at the country level (Fundar report); no identified San Juan mining contract
Based in Albardón, more than 25 years in business, it declares «drilling and blasting services aimed at the mining industry and at civil engineering projects, covering both exploration and production stages» and also the sale of explosives and blasting accessories. In December 2025 Austral Gold contracted it for drilling and blasting at Casposo prob. It appears in the two chamber registers, under a different name in each. ⚠️ It has no website of its own —the domain its own chamber links to returns the hosting provider's default page— and it cannot be checked whether it is registered as an explosives user, because that register is not public. ⇒ its existence forces the «almost 100 %» to be qualified, not deleted.
The jobs it createsDirect employment: today of the order of 150 to 250 jobs in gold drilling and blasting. La lectura completa para el que busca trabajo, en la hoja de este nicho para la gente →
calculate it
The number is our own estimate. The calculation, step by step, is below.
The full calculation, step by step
Concentration Highly concentrated and for a regulatory rather than a commercial reason: three global companies cover practically all the explosive and the blasting service in the province estim nobody publishes market share; our own allocation by known contracts, each with a different physical asset: a local plant, an on-mine base or its own nitrate. The barrier is the national authorisation plus capital and safety record. ⚠️ But «almost 100 %» sits badly with a fact that has to be stated: there is a San Juan company that declares charging and blasting —with more than 25 years behind it, based in Albardón, contracted in December 2025 by Austral Gold for drilling and blasting at Casposo— and which also sells explosives and accessories. It is not the oligopoly that falls away; it is the word «100 %». The drill and blast contracts of the three porphyries are tendered between 2027 and 2030 and depend on three decisions that have not yet been taken, and they lock in the winner for decades. Hualilán inaugurated the unbundled model —blastholes separated from the explosive— which opens space to those who are not globals.
The rule that moves it
This niche's driver is provincial: San Juan's Local Mining Development Law reserves part of mining procurement and employment for the local supplier and turns provincial qualification (RE.PRO.MIN) into an advantage for the local blasting-services provider.
See the underlying reading
The underlying policy that opens up this demand. It is the same inference declared by the rules and the program pillars pushing in this direction.
the RIGI promise is keptSee the full legal grounds
Where the number comes from
~USD 210 M/year at full wave 2034+ (range 130-300); ~USD 25-30 M/year today with gold
See the calculation, the variables and how it was validated
The TAM is built from the bottom up from three variables: how much rock is blasted, how much explosive each tonne requires and how much the all-in service costs. The engine is the rock tonnage, which multiplies when the copper porphyries reach steady state.
The TAM rises in dated steps: from today's gold core it jumps to ~USD 60-90 M in 2027-2029 (pre-stripping plus works blasting), ~USD 155 M in 2030-2033 (two porphyries at steady state) and ~USD 210 M from 2034 with El Pachón. The top-down cross-check —505 Mt × USD 0.35-0.60/t of full drill and blast— gives USD 175-300 M/yr and converges with the per-variable calculation.
The number rests on a few variables. The formula shows how it moves when each one changes; and each variable carries its freshness seal — how often it is worth revisiting. estim
The anchor is the rock-movement investment we opened in the Los Azules feasibility study: pre-stripping —moving the waste before reaching the ore— moves hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste years before the first pound of copper, and that is drilling and explosive. Today the market is small (~USD 25-30 M/yr) and multiplies towards ~USD 210 M/yr at full wave. The total is our own estimate —we say so—: we start from the verified scale of the porphyries and apply standard drilling and blasting consumption, with Hualilán's precedent already under way (drilling and explosives contracts signed in 2025).
Coverage: CASEMI's 187 members, where a single one declares blasting, and the 40 CAPRIMSA publishes, where none declares it; and the open data portal of the national body that licenses the use of explosives · Sep 14, 2026 · not reviewed: that body publishes other registers —gun shops, shooting clubs, ammonium nitrate sellers— but of explosives users, none: nobody can know from outside how many are licensed in San Juan
How to cite this figure: Despegue (2026). Blasting, explosives and blasthole drilling (San Juan) · San Juan. despegueargentina.com/en/san-juan/voladura-explosivos-barrenos · terms of use
Neighbouring markets3 markets in the same group, from USD 4,3 to USD 60 M a year
We look at what your company does and tell you whether we see a sign that it fits this market, with the evidence behind it. If we do not see one, we say so too and name the condition that would change it. One page as a dated PDF, within 48 working hours.
Open the report ↗A real analysis · a real company, open in full →
- 20+ years in technology, 15 of them in data and AI, for clients across Europe and the Americas
- Certified in AI governance (ISO/IEC 42001)
- Machine Learning (Google Cloud)
- Registered expert with the European Commission