London 21/09/2016 - Technical issues last week at a boiler at Sterlite's Tuticorin copper smelter in southern India will affect around 15,000-20,000 tonnes of copper cathode production, a source close to the company claimed.
"They are still working on the issue and hopefully it will restart later this week or next week. They are already doing some trials before the official restart," he said.
The subsidiary of Vedanta Resources will have little appetite to purchase copper concentrates on the spot market before the end of this year and is likely to postpone some of the shipments due under long-term contracts, the souce also claimed.
"There will be some adjustments required and the smelter will see how they could balance until the year end," he added.
The smelter has nameplate capacity of 400,000 tonnes per year of copper cathodes and as well as 250,000 tonnes per year of copper rod.
Spot treatment charges and refining charges (TC/RC) were last at $102-106 per tonne/10.2-10.6 cents per pound at the start of September for sales to smelters, the highest since 2016, due to ample availability of concentrates.
(Edited by Mark Shaw)