KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Indian State-run Hindustan Copper Limited (HCL), the country’s sole integrated copper producer, on Saturday started construction of a concentrator at its Rakha mines, marking efforts to restart the mines in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

The ground-breaking ceremony at Rakha for construction of the concentrator was also part of HCL’s initiation for development of a greenfield Chapri-Siddeshwar copper deposit in Jharkhand.

HCL chairperson Santosh Sharma said “re-opening of the Rakha mines and development of Chapri-Siddeswar deposit would add five-million tons a year of additional copper ore production to the company’s kitty entailing an investment of $141-million.

He said that considering the opportunity of increasing the copper resource base within HCL’s existing leasehold areas, the company would undertake depth exploration up to 1 000 m from the surface over the next two years with a corpus of $14-million.

The Rakha and Chapri Siddeswar projects were part of HCL’s plans to expand five copper mines, and on completion of all these projects the company’s total copper ore production would ramp up to 7.2-million tons a year, within the next five years, entailing an investment of $225-million, Sharma said.

As part of its longer term strategy, HCL was aiming to increase its total copper ore production to levels of around 20-million tons a year with total investments to the tune of $880-million; but the timeline for achieving this production level has not yet been officially declared.

The company’s targets for higher copper ore production were bolstered last year when Geological Survey of India (GSI) in a report established indicative reserves of copper in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

The discovered copper reserves spread across an estimated 25 km² would be taken up for detailed exploration by Chhattisgarh Copper Limited - the recently floated joint venture of  HCL and the Chhattisgarh Mineral Development Corporation.

The new discovered reserves were close to HCL’s existing Malanjkhand copper project in the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh, a company official said.