Antofagasta cops a fillip from copper

Shares in FTSE 100 miner Antofagasta soared today as the group cheered investors with news that it had produced a large amount of copper in the first three months of the year.

Despite poor economic data from China, the world’s biggest commodities consumer of copper, production at £9 billion-valued Antofagasta was up 13%. The shares rose more than 3% to 925.5p, although they are still nearly a third down on the start of the year.

The group’s history on the London Stock Exchange goes back to 1888 when it raised money in the capital to build and run a railway from a port on northern Chile’s Pacific coast to La Paz in Bolivia.