Hindustan Copper today inaugurated a plant at Ghatsila in Jharkhand which would be the first facility in India to produce London Metal Exchange (LME) grade nickel from primary resource.
Hindustan Copper said in a statement that the Singhbhum copper belt has unique ore characteristics which contained appreciable quantity of nickel. The plant was inaugurated by Balvinder Kumar, secretary with the mines ministry,
The company has installed and commissioned the technology to recover nickel.
At present, the capacity of the plant is 50 MT per annum, considering the current production rate from the Surda mines.
The nickel output is expected to increase eightfold after the completion of mine expansion projects undertaken at Ghatsila.
The annual demand for pure Nickel in India is around 45,000 MT and at present its market is totally dependent on imports.
