"We have decided to make the company a profit making one through capital expenditure of Rs 50 crore in the next three years," Parvathisem said.

The company, which reported a loss of over Rs 125 in 1997-98, is also proposing a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to reduce the huge wage bill along with reduction in overhead costs to bring down working capital costs.

Hindustan Copper will be invest Rs 50 crore for de-bottlenecking of various smelters to increase copper production and the turnaround strategy will be effective from the next financial year, Parvathisem said.

To reduce its dependence on imports, Hindustan Copper has increased production of copper cathode. This will lead to a fall in cathode imports from Rs 250 crore to Rs 60 crore to Rs 70 croreper annum.

"With increased capacity only 15 per cent of total requirement will be imported against 50 per cent earlier," he added.

Expressing optimism over the turnaround strategy, he said three years was the maximum period for showing results as the plan was based on copper prices of $1,650 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange (LME), which was at its lowest in the last eight years.

Through de-bottlenecking, the company will increase its Kehtri (Rajasthan) smelter capacity from 31,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) to 45,000 tpa, while the capacity for the Ghatsila (Bihar) smelter capacity will be increased to 25,000 tpa from existing 16,000 tpa.

Capacity of the Malpnjkhand (Madhya Pradesh) will go up to from 20,000 tpa to 25,000 tpa through excavation of mines, Parvathisem said.

Hindustan Copper will be shortly closing down some of its old mines which are not productive, he added.

"There are some mines where the copper ore content is as low as 0.2 per cent to 0.3 per cent, compared with 0.8 per centfor other mines and mining them is not economically feasible," he said.

On VRS, he said we have excessive manpower and will be writing to the government to provide funds from the National Renewal Fund.

The government has already contributed Rs 15 crore for VRS in 1997-98 and an additional Rs 6 crore has been earmarked in the current fiscal.

"This amount will not be sufficient for the proposed VRS and additional funds will required," he added.