India's SWIL Ltd has delayed by a couple of months its plans to hike output at its new copper smelter, which began limited production in March after a six-year delay, a company official said on Thursday.
The private firm, which will become India's third-largest copper maker once the plant reaches full capacity of 70,000 tonnes a year, had planned to operate at about 60 percent of installed capacity from July.
"We are still in the stabilisation phase and producing 400 to 500 tonnes of copper every month," said the official, adding the company has now planned to boost monthly output to about 3,500 tonnes after about two months.
"Stabilising output at a new plant may take six months to two years and there is nothing unusual in delaying the process of increasing output for a couple of months," said the official, who declined to be named.
The company plans to achieve full capacity in the fiscal year to March 2006, he added.
SWIL started trial production at the smelter in western Gujarat state in late March, after being bogged down by financial hurdles. A consortium of lenders, including ICICI Bank and Industrial Development Bank of India, owns a 64.61 percent stake. The company, which produces copper cathodes with 99.995 percent purity and according to the London Metal Exchange's grade A specifications, plans to export 40 percent of its output.
SWIL is using copper scrap as a raw material to produce the metal and avoiding imports of costlier copper concentrate, an intermediate product, the official said.
Swedish group Boliden has provided technology to the company, which can make copper from scrap as well as concentrate.
SWIL sources copper scrap from the domestic market and through imports, but also plans to buy copper concentrate from overseas in the long term.