Hindustan Copper raises discount rate on product

KOLKATA: Hindustan Copper, which is among the 60 PSUs on the Centre’s disinvestment list, has decided to double the rate of discount on end-products, such as copper rods, in a bid to reach out to a wider section of its small and retail customers. Hindustan Copper has recently decided to offer discounts of up to $30 on copper rods for amounts ranging between 1 and 100 tonne, this month. This is double the discount rate prevailing earlier.

A senior Hindustan Copper official told ET: “We would like to expand our retail focus on smaller customers. They constitute nearly 95% of our customers and typically buy anywhere between 1 and 100 tonne of the material.” For Hindustan Copper, a big customer is someone who buys more than 500 tonne of materials. However, such customers are a few in numbers.

The company’s move stems from its inability to convert more or process higher amounts of copper concentrate mainly due to an acute shortage of water at its at Khetri plant in Rajasthan. As a result, Hindustan Copper‘s smelting capacity of 31,000 tonne at Khetri plant is lying idle since last year. At present, the company’s only operational smelter is at the Indian Copper Complex at Ghatshila with a capacity of 18,500 tonne per annum.

Using the cathode from ICC, Hindustan Copper has been processing them into copper rods at its wire rod mill located at Taloja near Mumbai. The company’s Ghatshila unit can manage to feed only around 1,500 tonne of cathode — the main feedstock for copper rods — to Taloja unit every month.