Billionaire Gautam Adani’s $1.2 billion copper plant has hit a string of technical setbacks since it was commissioned ten months ago, raising concerns about the future of an operation vital to adding supply outside China.
Adani Enterprise Ltd.’s Kutch plant has yet to produce meaningful volumes of copper as a result of the engineering trouble, and closed for repair work in late March, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. It was not clear if the operation had since restarted.
According to data from India’s Ministry of Mines, the 500,000 tonne-per-year plant produced 94,000 tons of refined copper from April last year to February this year.
A spokesperson for Adani denied Kutch Copper Limited had encountered engineering challenges, and said execution and plant stabilization had been swift.
“KCL has made steady progress in plant ramp up and stabilization towards achieving the full capacity,” the spokesperson said in an email response to Bloomberg. “Within a very short period, KCL’s premium quality products serve hundreds of satisfied customers across product and segment category with long-term contracts in place.”
Earth-i — a company that monitors activity at smelters globally, using satellite data on smoke, stockpiles, vehicle movements and more — said it had seen no clear or significant signs of sustained smelting at the Gujarat site since last June. The agency has detected such markers at other new smelters in Asia and Africa over the last year.
The satellite data did point to other activity, including copper concentrate shipments arriving on site and smoke. Copper concentrate, a form of semi-processed ore, is used to feed the smelter. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter said high levels of impurities in the feedstock — including antimony, arsenic and uranium — had caused operational difficulties.
The presence of other metals can make the primary smelting process unstable, affecting the purity of copper and sulfuric acid produced. Adani’s procurement team is now actively looking for June and July shipments of cleaner copper concentrates, the people said.
To run at full capacity, Adani’s plant needs around 1.6 million tonnes a year of copper concentrate. Kutch Copper Ltd.’s import records show they bought just over a quarter of the feedstock required between February 2024 and February 2026.
Adani’s spokesperson said KCL had long-term concentrate tie-ups with global suppliers for the required “quantity and quality of concentrates, fully meeting operational requirement.”
The facility has an integrated design, where a primary smelter feeds semi-refined copper to the refinery. Even so, the company has imported over 26,400 metric tons of copper anodes, that semi-processed form, in the past two years, according to Bloomberg analysis of trade data.
China currently smelts almost half of the world’s copper, thanks to inexpensive power and technical expertise. An expansion of that capacity, along with mine disruptions and competition from traders, has caused a global raw material squeeze that has already prompted several operations outside China to shut down or turn to government support over the last year.
Trouble at Kutch could also prompt a reassessment of the world’s copper supply. Consultancies CRU, Wood Mackenzie and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence currently expect the Adani plant to be a meaningful contributor, producing between 175,000 tons and 385,000 tons of copper this year.
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