text: Sterlite Industries ("Sterlite"), a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, built a copper smelter in Tuticorin using an ISASMELT furnace and Peirce-Smith converters. The smelter was commissioned in 1996 and was designed to produce 60,000 t/y of copper (450,000 t/y of copper concentrate), but by increasing the oxygen content of the lance air and making modifications to other equipment, the ISASMELT furnace feed rate was increased to the point where the smelter was producing 180,000 t/y of copper.
  Sterlite commissioned a new ISASMELT furnace in May 2005 that was designed to treat 1.3 million t/y of copper concentrate, and the smelters production capacity was expanded to 300,000 t/y of copper. The new plant reached its design capacity, measured over a three-month period, six months after it started treating its first feed. Vedantas website states that the new ISASMELT furnace was successfully ramped up "in a record period of 45 days".
  Since then Sterlite decided to further expand its copper production by installing a third ISASMELT smelter and new refinery using IsaKidd technology. The new smelter has a design capacity of 1.36 million t/y of copper concentrate (containing 400,000 t/y of copper), processed through a single ISASMELT furnace.