Market Survey on Copper - Indian Bureau of Mines

about 70%. Therefore the production of secondary copper by the copper scrap
etc. processors comes out to be 33924 tonnes/year as shown in following Table:
3.9.
Table: 3.9- Production of Secondary Copper by Re-processors of copper Based
on Registered Capacities with the CPCB, New Delhi & Recovery Percentage
(Tonnes/year)
Total Scrap
intake Capacity
Limit in
Operation 40%
Capacity
utilisation 50%
Production of
Secondary Copper at
70% recovery
242 ,321 96,928 48,464 33,924
In addition to the secondary production of copper by the copper re-processors
there are units which recover secondary copper along with other metals.
As per the discussions in field as mentioned above that only 40% of these units
are in operations and the capacity utilization by these units is about 50%. As copper
is one of the metal recovered along with other metals such as zinc, nickel etc. the
recovery factor of copper is taken as 30%. Based on these factors, the production of
secondary copper by the processors of other non-ferrous metals and waste has been
calculated. The production of secondary copper thus arrived at 31051 tonnes per year
as shown in the Table: 3.10.
Table: 3.10 - Production of Secondary Copper by Re-processors of Other Non-
Ferrous Metal Waste based on Registered Capacities with the CPCB, New Delhi
& Recovery percentage
(Tonnes/Year)
Total Scrap
intake Capacity
Units in
Operation 40%
Capacity
Utilisation
50%
Production of Copper
at 30% recovery
517,515 207,006 103,503 31,051
3.4.2 Apparent Production
In view of the above discussion the total secondary copper production
by copper re-processors and other non-ferrous metals and waste re-processors is
arrived at 64,975 tonnes/year.
The production of virgin a primary copper cathodes during 2008-09 was
502,081 tonnes in comparison to 64,975 tonnes of secondary copper production
which is about 13% of the primary production.
Copper is among the most efficiently recycled material in global
commerce, China being the leader in the scrap utilisation. It is 100 percent
recyclable without any loss in performance if properly refined. As per
60