Gautam Adani secures ore for $1.2 Billion copper smelter in Gujarat's Mundra

Billionaire Gautam Adani's conglomerate has signed contracts to buy 1.6 million tons a year of copper concentrate for the world's largest single-location smelter for the industrial metal.

The first 500,000 tons of capacity at the $1.2 billion facility in Mundra in Gujarat is set to start operations next month, according to Vinay Prakash, chief executive officer at Adani Natural Resources. 

This will be expanded to 1 million tons by March 2029 to cater for a forecast doubling of Indian copper demand by the end of the decade, he said in an interview.

Adani Enterprises Ltd., the port-to-power conglomerate's flagship company, is seeking resource security in critical minerals and is resuming capital expenditure now that its shares have stabilized after a short-seller attack in January 2023.

The smelter is starting up just as the global copper market experiences a collapse in the fees that processors charge miners because there's not enough ore to go around.

A combination of high operating costs and the low fees means smelters and refiners globally may be forced to curtail production, Prakash said. 

The concentrate deals are a mix of short- and long-term arrangements, Prakash said, without disclosing the suppliers. 

Concentrate supply is likely to increase in the medium- to long-term as more mining projects, including in Africa and Peru, come on stream, he said.