“The company should produce roughly 4.7 million tonnes of ore in 2026-27,” Hindustan Copper’s managing director, Sanjiv Kumar Singh, told ET, adding this will be 28-30% higher than 2025-26 and most likely the “best-ever year” for the public sector undertaking.
The targeted jump in output will come from its mines at Ghatshila in Jharkhand and Khetri in Rajasthan.
On Demand & Prices
On rising demand, Singh said artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is now globally the fastest growing source of demand for copper. “Google’s data centre at Vizag alone will need 65,500 tonnes of copper,” he said, adding that the upgrade of power transmission networks by China and India will also boost demand. “Global copper production has remained at last year’s levels and ore grades are going down as mining continues,” Singh sai
The Iran-US war has disrupted shipments of sulfuric acid (used for bleaching copper) to Africa and Latin America, stalling operations there. An accident at Indonesia’s Grasberg mine has also delayed production by around six months. “If the supply side is restricted by war, prices should be high,” he said.