Market Survey on Copper - Indian Bureau of Mines

East Iran and Lar in Zahedan locality. These deposits are having copper concentration
from 0.4% Cu to 1.7% Cu. There are some major copper deposits where the
exploratory work is going on. They are Anjerd in Aher; Taknar in Kashmar; Abhas
Abad in Sharud and Ali Abad in Taft localities.
NICICO, National Iranian Copper Industries Co. (erstwhile Sarcheshmeh
Copper Mines Joint Stock Company) is the only company producing copper in Iran.
The company is working three major deposits namely i) Sarcheshmeh Copper
Complex which is located 160 km south of Kermen and 50 km south of Rafsanjan. It
is a porphyry copper deposit having one of the biggest open pits in the world. The
mine has estimated reserves of 1200 million tonnes of sulphide copper ore with an
average grade of 0.7% Cu. ii) The Miduk Copper Complex is located 42 km northeast
of Shahr-Babak town, 132 km northwest of Sarcheshmeh copper mines in Kerman
Province. The estimated reserves of the mine are 178 million tonnes with an average
grade of 0.83% Cu and iii) Sungun Copper Complex which is located 130 km north of
Tabriz, in East Azerbaijan province. Based on the latest evaluation, estimated
reserves are 806 million tonnes with an average grade of 0.61% Cu.
The annual production capacity of copper concentrates of NICICO is 970,000
tonnes. The company has plans to increase the capacity to 1,366,000 tonnes. The
company has smelters and refineries located at Sarcheshmeh and Khatoonabad with
electrowinning and elctrorefining facilities. The present production capacity of
copper cathodes of the company is 225,000tonnes which is expected to reach 480,000
tonnes in the near future. The company also operates 2 small mines namely Qaleh
Zari in Khorasan province with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes and Chah Musa & Qaleh
Sukhteh mine in Samnan province with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes.
Iran is one of the major exporters of copper ores & concentrates to India. India
imported copper ores & concentrates from Iran to a tune of 34,000 tonnes in 2006-07
which rose by 166% in 2007-08 at 91,000 tonnes. In 2008-09 the imports from Iran
were 125,000 tonnes a rise of 37% over the previous year. With the growing copper
smelter capacities in India, there are good prospects for importing copper ores &
concentrates from Iran to feed the Indian copper smelters.
Japan
There are no economical copper ore deposits in Japan. Hence
there is no production of copper ores & concentrates in Japan. The
country depends wholly upon the imports of copper ores and concentrates. Japan
imports copper ores and concentrates mainly from Chile, Indonesia, Australia, Canada
and Peru. The imports of copper ores & concentrates in the country are showing an
increasing trend. The imports which were 4.5 million tonnes (gross weight) in 2004
decreased marginally to 4.32 million tonnes in 2005 and increased again in 2006 to
4.63 million tonnes and further to 5.05 million tonnes in 2007. The imports were
4.77 million tonnes in 2009.
Japan has a good capacity to produce refined copper. The total capacity of
refined copper production in the country is approximately 1.68 million tonnes. The
Pan Pacific Copper Co. Ltd. has two plants at Saganosiki smelter & refinery and
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