Billionaire Gautam Adani-led group is building the world’s largest single-location copper manufacturing plant at Mundra in Gujarat. The plant will help cut India’s dependence on imports and aid energy transition.
The 1.2-billion dollar facility will start operations of the first phase by March-end. It will achieve its full-scale 1 million tonnes capacity by 2029.
India joins China and other nations that are rapidly expanding production of copper, a metal crucial for transition away from fossil fuels.
Technologies critical to the energy transition like electric vehicles (EVs), charging infrastructure, solar photovoltaics (PV), wind and batteries, all require copper.
Adani’s copper plant comes at a time when Vedanta Ltd is seeking to reopen a long-shuttered 400,000 tonnes plant at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. The country’s biggest copper smelter is currently operated by Hindalco Industries Ltd, which also has a capacity of 0.5 million tonnes.
Copper is the third most used industrial metal after steel and aluminium, and its demand is rising on the back of fast-growing renewable energy, telecom and electric vehicle industries.
India’s copper production has been unable to meet this demand, and domestic supply disruptions have led to a higher dependency on imported copper. The country’s imports have been consistently on the rise for the past five years.
Globally, copper production is more concentrated than oil. The two top producers – Chile and Peru – account for 38 per cent of world production.
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