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.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.Even though the Government has reiterated that there is now an improved availability of coal in the country overall, the non-availability of rakes for the non-regulated sectors remains a major concern. Curtailing coal supplies to Captive Power Plants (CPPs) has directly resulted in a coal crunch situation for the Aluminium Sector. 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. 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.
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