Aluminium industry raises concerns over coal shortage, writes to PMO seeking intervention

New Delhi, Nov 13 (KNN) The power intensive aluminium industry,  facing huge coal shortages industry has sought intervention from the PMO to direct coal India and other companies to provide the committed quantity of coal.

Aluminium Association of India (AAI), in a letter to PMO AAI has said that the investment of Rs.1.2 lakh crore in the aluminium sector has been holding a debt of Rs. 70,000 crore with the employment for 7.5 lakh people at a very critical risk due to coal shortage.

According to the letter ,  aluminium is a highly power-intensive industry in which power contributes to 45 per cent of production cost and any power outage/failure (4 hours or more) results in freezing of aluminium pots and shutting down of plant for at least 6 months rendering heavy losses.

The letter further said the industry has set up 8,700 mw captive power plant capacity to meet power requirement for operations, but recent coal materialisation has been substantially low and the committed coal supply quantity under the linkages auction is not being fulfilled. The coal shortfall against linkages is 57 per cent in the case of Vedanta, 21 per cent for Balco and 78 per cent for Hindalco.

The aluminium industry has made huge investments of Rs 1.2 lakh crore in the last few years to raise domestic production capacity to 4.1 mt (million tonnes) from 2 mt, in line with increasing demand. (KNN/AG)