Mariana says Copper One set to be world pioneer autonomy-first mine and refinery
Located in southeastern Utah, Mariana Copper One is an operating copper mine and refinery currently producing high-purity copper cathode for the US market. The site, which Mariana Minerals acquired in late 2025, has been operating for over 15 years and includes an existing open pit mine, a heap bioleaching operation, a hydrometallurgical refining circuit utilising solvent extraction and electrowinning, and significant expansion potential.
Over the past 12 months, Mariana partnered with the existing site team – previously Lisbon Valley Mining Company – to develop and deploy advanced software and autonomous systems that will overcome past operational challenges and expand copper output.
The company states: “Our path forward is clear. Deploy PlantOS at scale to maximise copper recovery and reduce copper refining costs throughout heap leaching, solvent extraction, and electrowinning. Restart mining operations with autonomous equipment and orchestration via MineOS. Integrate copper scrap processing into the refining circuit, leveraging PlantOS to manage feedstock variability and to put a meaningful dent in US copper scrap exports. Scale combined output at the site to 50,000 metric tonnes per year from both geologic and scrap feedstocks (leveraging CapitalProjectOS to accelerate capital project delivery). This is Physical AI at scale.”
Mariana Minerals argues that mining and refining operations require thousands of cross-functional decisions daily and that today those decisions are informed by fragmented data management systems and driven by human intuition. “This leads to significant shift-to-shift performance variability and exposes the major challenge we face today: we don’t have enough people that know how to operate and optimise these complex systems. MarianaOS breaks this paradigm.” MarianaOS brings together CapitalProjectOS, PlantOS and MineOS in one single autonomy and AI-driven platform.
It says MarianaOS is a unified software platform that connects process development, capital project execution, geologic modeling, mine planning, simulation, fleet orchestration, plant control, maintenance, and supply chain management to automate operational optimisation across the value chain. “This integration gives operating teams a single, real-time view of distributed systems – from fleet telemetry and process plant performance to market signals and supply chain management. Automated data pipelines ensure information flows reliably and continuously, eliminating manual reporting delays and enabling faster operational responses.”
On top of this integrated data layer, machine learning and reinforcement learning optimise complex operational tradeoffs – drill patterns, haulage routing, blending strategies, plant throughput, reagent, and energy use – while continuously learning from outcomes. The result is a self-improving system that autonomously orchestrates decisions across the mine, refinery, and logistics network, increasing productivity and reducing costs.
MarianaOS uses simulation, predictive maintenance, and reinforcement learning to automate drill and blast operations, truck and shovel orchestration, and process plant control based on real-time data; it handles continuous optimisation and data integration while engineers, geologists, operators, and planners validate models, monitor the operation, and execute essential, hard to automate tasks. “The expertise and creativity of great people remain essential, but autonomy and agentic workflows enable us to mine and refine more while the skilled labour pool shrinks.”
It adds: “There is a massive amount of meat on the bone in optimising mining operations, and while some mines globally have introduced remote controlled and semi-autonomous operations, full implementation requires custom development with third parties and high latency interfaces between site teams and technology partners, can take over a decade, and still relies heavily on human-in-the-loop control. MineOS compresses this implementation timeline, accelerating the deployment of autonomous mining and support equipment, automating and integrating data pipelines between distributed systems, and driving human-in-the-loop operations to near zero.”
Moving to processing – Copper One is integrating copper scrap processing directly into the existing refining circuit. ”Our solvent extraction-electrowinning system is well-suited to process both primary ore from mining operations and secondary copper from scrap feedstocks. By tooling the refinery to handle both sources, we can put a very real dent in the copper scrap exported from the US annually, capturing domestic secondary resources that would otherwise be shipped overseas for processing and subsequent import. This dual-feedstock approach aligns with a core thesis at Mariana that we’ve had from the beginning – modern refineries must be designed to process both geologic and recycled feedstocks. As we scale Copper One to 50,000 metric tonnes of refined copper output per year, scrap processing will be a meaningful contributor to our output and a proof point that recycling can be done economically in the United States.”
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