London 27/05/2016 - Birla Copper has restarted operations at its Dahej smelter in Gujarat, FastMarkets understands, following a period of maintenance.
Dahej, which produces 500,000 tonnes per year of refined copper, was idled for maintenance work at the start of April.
The Indian copper producer had extended planned maintenance at the start of this month but started to feed the smelter again last week, FastMarkets understands
Birla, for which owner Hindalco accepted an takeover offer from Australian gold producer Metals X in April, had been re-bricking the furnace. It initially planned to finish this by the middle to the end of May, sources said.
Production has probably been affected - the company had to defer scheduled deliveries of copper concentrates to its plant, multiple sources said.
Treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs) for clean, standard grade copper concentrates have been climbing steadily since March when smelters and traders rushed to cover positions after extended annual supply negotiations.
Smelter buying terms for copper concentrates were assessed two weeks ago at $90-95 per tonne/9-9.5 cents per pound but are now up to $95-99/ 9.5-9.9 cents to both traders and smelters, either side of the 2016 benchmark level of $97.35/9.735 cents.
(Additional reporting by Archie Hunter, Editing by Mark Shaw)