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Hindalco Industries Limited owns
51 per cent of Aditya
Birla Minerals Limited (ABML), with the rest
being held by the public. ABML has 100 per cent holding
in Birla Nifty Pty Limited and Birla Mt. Gordon
Pty Limited located in Western Australia and Queensland,
respectively. ABML, an S&P ASX 300 Index company,
is one of the largest pure copper companies listed
on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Birla
Nifty Pty Limited
The Nifty copper operation consists of an underground
mine, heap leach pads, a solvent extraction
and electro winning (SX-EW) processing plant, and
a copper concentrator plant. A copper sulphide
deposit is located at the lower levels of the
Nifty open pit mine and an underground mine and
concentrator have been developed to mine and process
2.3mtpa ore from this deposit.
The
Nifty sulphide operation commenced ore production
from stoping in December 2005 and concentrate
production in March 2006. During FY2011, Nifty
produced 58,035 tonnes of copper in concentrate.
Birla Nifty's copper cathode capacity is 25ktpa.
Open pit mining was stopped in 2006. The cathode operations were put in care and maintenance during GFC, and are currently being examined to restart the cathode operations.
Birla
Mt. Gordon Pty Limited
Mt.
Gordon operations include underground mining operations
and a concentrator plant with a milling capacity
to process up to 1.5 MTPA of ore to produce copper
in concentrate. The Mt. Gordon copper operation
consists of an underground mine and a copper concentrate
plant. In 2004, a copper concentrator was commissioned
to provide concentrate for use at Hindalco's operations
in Dahej. During FY2011, Mt. Gordon produced 58,035 tonnes of copper in concentrate, before it was put
under care and maintenance in January 2009.
Both
Nifty and Mt. Gordon have a long term life of mine
off-take agreement with Hindalco for supply of copper
concentrate to the copper smelter at Dahej, Gujarat. Mt Gordon copper operations were restarted in April 2011.
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