SANTIAGO (Commodity Online): Chile’s government heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday when the workers of the country’s Chuquicamata copper mine, one of the world’s largest, called off the strike.

Workers at the mine, who went on strike on Monday, accepted a new contract from state-owned Codelco during a union vote. The workers had threatened to strike last week after failed negotiations.

The latest offer by Codelco included salary increases of about 4 % and bonuses of about $24,000.

The Chuquicamata mine produces about 4% of the copper used in the world, officials said.

The Chuquicamata mine in northern Chile is one of the world’s largest open-pit operations and it produces about half of Codelco’s output. Codelco as a whole produces about 4 per cent of the world’s copper. With production in Chile’s main mine hit by the strike, copper market is all set to hot up in the coming days.

According to media reports, over 2,800 workers did not come for work on Monday when the strike began.

Codelco is the Chilean state owned copper mining company formed in 1976 from the foreign owned copper companies that were nationalised in 1971. The headquarters is in Santiago and the seven-man board of directors is appointed by the President of the republic.

It was the largest copper producing company in the world and produced 1.66 million tonnes of the metal in 2007, 11% of the world total. It owns the world’s largest known copper reserves and resources. At the end of 2007 it had a total of reserves and resources of 118 million tonnes of copper in its mining plan, sufficient to ensure more than 70 years of operations at current production levels.

Codelco’s principal product is cathode copper. It is one of the world’s foremost molybdenum producers and produced 27,857 fine metric tons in 2007 and is a large producer of rhenium, of which Chile is the world's largest producer .

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