International Copper Association India Managing Director Mayur Karmarkar

India should recycle copper as a strategic intervention and promote recycling it to keep more stocks of the red metal in the years to come, the International Copper Association India (ICAI) Managing Director Mayur Karmarkar has said.

“We need to start building reserves. They can be built by substituting with other materials for which we already have the reserves in the form of mines,” he told businessline in an online interaction.  

As an overall strategy, India needs to have more copper. “What you buy today is always cheaper than buying it tomorrow. There is a study done by Nanjing University in China, which said above-the-ground stocks in China are more in terms of volume than below-the-ground,” he said.

Karmarkat said as per data, “we have only 15 million tonnes of copper” in the region. In comparison, China has over 120 million tonnes and the European Union 80 million tonnes.

Overall, our functional reserves per capita are low, so India should buy copper today as a national resource strategy from wherever it is available and keep that within the economy, which is to keep recycling, avoiding exports of scraps or any recycled copper.  

“For example, the Ministry of Mines has projected copper demand at 10 million tonnes. If we need to import the entire 10 million tonnes from the mine or say 95 per cent of it in the concentrate form, then we could be spending something like $140 billion,” said the ICAI managing director, adding that recycling of the metal is better than underground reserves, which India does not have.

 “If you look at the economy, our entire cost will be lower because we will be only recycling copper,” said Karmarkar, adding that the logic of a family buying small amounts of gold over the years should be applied to copper also. 

On the impact of soaring copper prices in India, Karmarkar said since India was using bare minimum copper, no major change is expected in the demand pattern or trend. 

“Our copper demand growth is growing at the rate of 9-plus per cent, which is a little more than the GDP growth, and it would continue. So, there won’t be any big change in the incremental change overall in the relative material cost because we have to look at the relative material cost with the other competing materials,” he said.

Asked if India’s good copper recovery from scrap would be an advantage, the ICAI managing director said it could result in more material being available. 

On policy measures which could help the country build a strong copper security and recycling ecosystem, he said the good and services tax (GST) issue has to be addressed.   

“Formalisation of the recycling industry is the first part. The second part which is required is to stop exporting the mineral without value.  We should discourage the export of the metal as a raw material,” he said.  

On the country positioning itself from being exposed to future supply shocks, Karmarkar said Indian private and government companies should get into mining resources in other countries. They should work on government-to-government relationships, start allocating quotas immediately so that more copper will come into the country in a concentrated form.

On the Madras High Court asking Tamil Nadu government to consider permitting the Sterlite Group to run a green copper plant in Thoothukudi city, he said the Tamil Nadu government should relook it as more as a catalyst for further industrialisation.

“The (State) government can take over and start operating the assets, outsourcing the entire operation to somebody. Saving these national assets is far more important than being wasted because  whatever infrastructure required for running that smelter is already available there,” said the ICAI managing director.

Published on September 24, 2026