Citing unsustainable operational cost, Aditya Birla Minerals stopped operation at its 20,000-tonne-a-year copper concentrate producing mine at Mt. Gordon in Queensland, Australia.

The profitability of the company?s operations has been adversely hit by the unacceptably high unit operating cost per pound of copper produced at the mine at current production rates, the company said in a filing at the Australian Securities Exchange.

The production performance at the Mt. Gordon operations has been lower than expected for various reasons.

This is one of the two copper bearing assets of Aditya Birla Minerals and the company closed the mine from April-end for an indefinite period. The company feels that the price level of copper did not support the cost of production.

The board of directors of the company took this decision recently. Hindalco Industries' 500,000-tonne-a-year smelter located at Dahej in Gujarat receives concentrates from the mine.

According to a scoping study, the company said there was an opportunity to transform Mt Gordon into a high-production operation with lower per unit operating cost.

After acquisition in 2003, Aditya Birla group commissioned a copper concentrator at the mine in 2004 to provide concentrate for use at Hindalco's operations at Dahej.