Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Aluminium Association of India (AAI) on Wednesday urged the government to supply 25-30 coal rakes per day to ensure viable operations of the aluminium industry.
The association said the coal stocks are left for only three to four days and production disruptions are looming across the Indian aluminium sector.
“With no relief in sight despite coal stocks running critically low and production disruptions looming across the Indian aluminium sector, the AAI has approached the Ministry of Coal, urging the immediate resumption of adequate coal rakes for the highly power-intensive Aluminium industry,” said the association in a statement.
In its representation, AAI has lauded the combined efforts by the coal ministry and Coal India Limited in reviving domestic coal production, which has helped ease the coal supply crisis for the power sector.
However, this has come at enormous cost to the Captive Power Plants (CPP)-based industry and the worst impacted is the Indian aluminium industry, which continues to see depleting coal stocks of only 3-4 days, abysmally low compared to the prescribed level of 15 days for the sector.
“Struggling to cope with this prolonged crisis since the second quarter of this fiscal year, the AAI has now sought the Ministry’s support to ensure adequate supplies to the CPPs by earmarking at least 25-30 coal rakes per day to ensure viable industry operations,” said AAI.
The need for the CPPs is especially urgent, given that Aluminium production is a continuous process that requires huge volumes of uninterrupted quality power supply. This quantum can only be met only through the in-house CPPs set up by all the aluminium smelters plants to meet this specific requirement.
Accordingly, the industry has established Captive Power Plants of – 9,400 MW capacity (comprising – 34 per cent of the cumulative thermal CPPs capacity domestically) to supply continuous power for aluminium operations.“Any power interruption in an aluminium smelting operation for more than 2 hours can lead to the freezing of molten aluminium within the smelting pots, which takes a minimum of 6 months to fix, and then almost a year to once again begin yielding the desired metal output, causing enormous production, cost and supply disruptions,” said AAI.
With the continued crisis, it will take over a year’s time to clear the backlog of rakes, and for the CPPs to build and maintain adequate coal stocks for sustainable operations. The crisis further aggravates with the last-minute cancellation of coal auctions for NRS, giving no relief for the domestic industry to secure coal for manufacturing and CPP-based industries.
