The smelter, with the capacity to produce 200,000 tonnes per year, is on the drawing boards for Texas City on the Gulf of Mexico, Thomas Mackey told The Northern Miner in a telephone interview.
Mackey is president of Texas Copper, the company established to operate the smelter. Majority owner of Texas Copper is Mitsubishi; minority partners in the venture include Nippon Mining, Dowa Mining, Furukawa Co. and several American investors.
Cost of the custom smelter is estimated to be $200 million(US). Most of the feed will arrive from offshore, including from Chile. There will also be domestic feed. Mackey said the Texas City facility, with the capacity to supply about one-tenth of current U.S. copper requirements, will be the first to be built in many years along the American coastline.
Application for permits to build the smelter have been filed. Approval in the near future could see construction under way early in 1990. Assuming a 1990 building start, Mackey said the facility could be in production by the end of 1991, and in full production in 1992.
“There is a need for new copper technology,” Mackey said, explaining Texas Copper anticipates environmental concerns could force existing smelters to either update equipment or cut back on output, possibly forcing them out of business.
The Kidd Creek complex of Falconbridge Ltd. at Timmins, Ont., features the Mitsubishi continuous smelting process.
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