Hindustan Copper, India’s sole miner of the mineral, is looking to boost its reserves and expand capacity at a time when global demand is rising. The company plans to increase the capacity of its flagship mine in Madhya Pradesh from 2.75 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 5 MTPA by FY30, Chairman and Managing Director Sanjiv Kumar Singh told Moneycontrol in an interview.
The company will spend about Rs 1,300 crore in the mine expansion, which includes setting up a concentrator plant for ore beneficiation and refining.
Overall, Hindustan Copper has set aside Rs 2,000 crore as capital expenditure over the next five years, to be funded through internal accruals. This will be used to scale up operations at its three mines in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. A large part of the capex will go to the Malanjkhand mine, where about 50 percent of the work is already complete. The company has so far spent nearly Rs 600 crore on expanding underground mining in the Madhya Pradesh site.
The plan will also look at improving the grade of copper extracted from the mines. Currently, the company has resources and reserves of 755.32 million tonnes of ore containing 0.95 percent copper, which equates to approximately 7.18 million tonnes of contained copper metal. The public sector company has tapped Chile's national mining company Codelco to seek expertise on improving efficiency in exploration and beneficiation. "We are working on deducing more copper concentrate from the same copper ore using technologies which Codelco will share with us. Now we are getting the copper concentrate in Malanjkhand at 26 to 27 percent—if by any technique or any technology it goes up by 1 or 2 percentage points, say to 28 percent, you are producing more copper concentrate.," Singh added.
With the current expansion activities across all three mines, the miniratna company looks to raise existing overall capacity from 3.75 MTPA to 12.2 MTPA by FY30.
Hindustan Copper is also shifting its focus towards exploration. The company had faced flak in the 2024 Comptroller and Auditor General of India report for not undertaking any greenfield exploration in over three decades. The mining company has access to about 45 percent of India’s copper ore reserves and resources, according to its investor presentation.
"Exploration is now the focus area of Hindustan copper," Singh said, adding that the company had raised its exploration spends from Rs 10 crore to Rs 60 crore now. "We want to explore all remaining areas. We still have some unexplored properties within our own leases," he said.
Besides, the company has also taken up exploration in Argentina.
"We have already got five (copper) blocks in Argentina. We are developing them, the preliminary exploration is already completed. The geological report is expected within a few days or or weeks, after which a detailed exploration will be done," Singh said. Hindustan Copper is yet to begin any greenfield exploration in India. It did bid at the government's critical minerals auction but its results are still awaited.
Even as it ramps up production, Hindustan Copper is not eyeing exports. Singh said the company prefers selling concentrates to domestic players as it ensures quicker cash flow compared to delayed payments when dealing with customers overseas.
The company currently sells its concentrates to the Aditya Birla Group's Hindalco and Adani Group's Kutch copper plant.
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