Sterlite Industries (India) Limited - Sterlite Industries India Ltd.

Our Production Process
Our copper business has a number of elements which are summarized in the following diagram and explained in greater detail below:
Supply of Copper Concentrate
As a custom smelter, we source a significant majority of our copper concentrate from third party suppliers at the LME price less a TcRc.
Approximately 8.0% of our copper concentrate was sourced from our own mine in Tasmania, Australia in fiscal 2009. All of the copper
concentrate used in our operations, whether from our own mine in Australia or from third party suppliers, is imported through the port of
Tuticorin in Southern India and transported by road to our Tuticorin smelter.
Tuticorin Smelter
Our Tuticorin smelter processes copper concentrate by combining it with silica flux and lime, where required, and feeding it into the
IsaSmelt TM furnaces. The furnaces smelt the copper concentrate, producing copper matte, slag and sulphur dioxide gas. The slag and the copper
matte flow into a holding furnace, where they are separated. The slag is further smelted to extract additional copper matte and then the
remaining slag is discarded. The copper matte is transferred to a converter, where it is oxidized to produce blister copper. The blister copper is
fed into the anode furnace where additional sulphur dioxide is removed and the copper is cast as copper anodes.
Tuticorin Acid Plants
The sulphur dioxide gas produced from the IsaSmelt TM furnaces at Tuticorin in the process of creating copper anodes is fed through the
sulphuric acid plant at Tuticorin to be converted into sulphuric acid. Most of the sulphuric acid is further treated in our phosphoric acid plant to
be converted into phosphoric acid. Both the sulphuric acid and the phosphoric acid are sold primarily to fertilizer manufacturers. The treatment
of the sulphur dioxide gas creates sulphuric acid and phosphoric acid by-products, including gypsum, from the copper smelting process and
avoids the release of the harmful sulphur dioxide gas.