ASARCO

History

ASARCO was founded in 1888 as the American Smelting and Refining Company by Henry H. Rogers, William Rockefeller, Adolph Lewisohn, Robert S. Towne, Anton Eilers, and Leonard Lewisohn.

In April 1901, the Guggenheim family gained control of the company, and in 1905, bought the Tacoma smelter from the Bunker Hill Mining Company. ASARCO eventually controlled 90% of the U.S. lead production, essentially becoming a smelter trust.

Based in Tucson, Arizona, the company grew to conduct mining, smelting, and refining of primarily copper. Open-pit mining is primarily utilized as the most efficient method of recovering this metal; the company's three largest such works are the Mission, Silver Bell, and the Ray mines in Arizona. The company had also operated in silver mining in Idaho. Its mines produce 350,000,000 to 400,000,000 pounds (160,000,000 to 180,000,000 kg) of copper a year. ASARCO conducts solvent extraction and electrowinning at the Ray and Silver Bell mines in Pima County, Arizona, and Pinal County, Arizona, and operates a smelter in Hayden, Arizona. It also had a smelting plant in El Paso, Texas, operations of which have since been suspended.

Chemetco, once one of the U.S.'s major secondary copper smelters, maintained a critical commercial relationship with ASARCO through the supply of unrefined copper anodes produced at its Hartford, Illinois facility. According to a 2003 United States International Trade Commission report, Chemetco regularly shipped semi-refined anodes by rail to ASARCO’s Amarillo, Texas, refinery for final electrolytic purification into 99.99% copper cathode. The closure of Chemetco in 2001 caused ASARCO to significantly curtail production at its Amarillo facility, which had an annual refining capacity of 290,000 metric tons, due to the sudden loss of this essential feedstock. The 290,000 metric tons figure refers to the Amarillo refinery’s total annual refining capacity, not the volume of feedstock previously supplied to ASARCO.

From 1901 to 1959, American Smelting and Refining was included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 1975 it officially changed its name to ASARCO Incorporated. In 1999 it was acquired by Grupo México. On August 9, 2005, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Corpus Christi, Texas under then-president Daniel Tellechea.