Hindustan Copper Plans Concentrate Sales To Hindalco, Adani From Chile's Codelco Mines

State-run Hindustan Copper is planning to sell copper concentrate produced from mines it is acquiring from Chile's Codelco to Hindalco and Adani, according to a Reuters report. The move is aimed at meeting India's rising demand for the metal.

The company is also in talks to form a joint venture with Codelco, the Chilean state-run miner, to mine and sell copper, the report added.

Mines Secretary Piyush Goyal had earlier said Hindustan Copper is in the "final stages" of taking over four copper blocks from Codelco. He said the company had initially planned to bid for a single block but expanded its plans after assessing the scale of the demand-supply gap.

"HCL was initially planning to take over one block in Chile. Then we assessed our that requirement of copper is large, and the availability is less, so, it was decided that HCL should bid for four blocks in collaboration with other PSUs," Goyal told reporters during a media interaction on April 10.

Hindustan Copper had signed a preliminary agreement with Codelco last year to explore mutually beneficial opportunities in exploration and mining. In May this year, it signed a non-disclosure agreement with Codelco and appointed a deal advisor. The company had previously denied that it was in talks over a joint venture.

Notably, due diligence is currently underway, and Hindustan Copper is open to bringing in partners for the joint venture, including Coal India and NTPC Mining. Earlier this year, a technical team from Hindustan Copper, along with executives from NTPC Mining and Coal India, visited Chile as part of the process. Mining operations are expected to take about a decade to begin once the blocks are secured.

Rising Import Dependence

Hindalco, owned by the Aditya Birla Group, is among India's largest producers of aluminium and copper. Adani operates Kutch Copper, a $1.2 billion smelter in Gujarat that the company describes as the world's largest single-location plant of its kind.

India, the world's second-largest importer of refined copper, may need to import between 91% and 97% of its copper concentrate requirements by 2047, according to a government document cited by Reuters.

India currently produces an estimated 573,000 metric tons of refined copper annually, against a demand of around 1.8 million tons. The government has also proposed including a chapter on copper in ongoing free trade agreement talks with Chile to help secure a fixed quantity of copper concentrate.