Vedanta hopes to run Odisha refinery till Dec 5

Business Standard, Nov 10, 2012

Refinery to remain afloat on bauxite supply from GMDC, Balco mines

Jayajit Dash / Bhubaneswar Nov 10, 2012, 15:26 IST Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL) is hopeful of running its one million tonne refinery at Lanjigarh till December 5, buoyed by bauxite supplies from Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) and Bharat Aluminium Company's (Balco) Kawardah mines in Chhattisgarh. The aluminium firm on September 6 had served a notice to the state labour department, intending to shut the refinery by December 5 as raw material unavailability had impaired the plant's operations. "We have received the first shipment of 45,000 tonne from GMDC. The residual 45,000 tonne will reach our plant premises by November 13. Bauxite supplies from GMDC and Balco's Kawardah mines will help us to run the refinery till December 5. But concerns of running the refinery beyond this date still remain”, said a senior VAL official. VAL is currently running its refinery at 60% capacity. Balco's mine is supplying 3,000 tonne of bauxite every day to the refinery. VAL needs 10,000 tonne of bauxite per day to run its refinery at full capacity. The official said talks are on with exporters based out of Gujarat and Maharashtra but no deal has been sealed yet. Recently, Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal had called on chief minister Naveen Patnaik, impressing upon the need to make available bauxite for the refinery. Earlier, VAL had approached both Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (Fimi) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci), seeking a ban on bauxite exports. While VAL was struggling to keep its refinery operations afloat for want of bauxite, the raw material continued to be exported by private miners in Gujarat and Maharashtra due to better price realisations. The company has not been alloted any mining lease in Odisha and fully depends on externally-sourced bauxite to run its refinery. It had entered into a pact with state-controlled miner Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) for supply of bauxite from Niyamgiri hills. However, attempts to mine bauxite in the ecologically-sensitive hills were thwarted by the Union environment ministry, which scrapped the Stage-II forest clearance on August 24, 2010. Around 6,500 people, including 550 employed directly, 5,000 engaged indirectly and 1,000 self-employed, in and around the plant depend on the VAL refinery for their livelihood. The company claimed to have spent Rs 150 crore on the development of the local area and community.