Balco Korba sheet rolling shop resumes operations

Vedanta owned Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (Balco) has resumed sheet rolling operations at its Korba facility in Chhattisgarh, India. This marks the metal major's comeback in the rolling aluminium products business that was held up about a year ago.

Last year, August, Balco's sheet rolling shop (SRS) in Korba was shut down as it was running in huge loss owing to the meltdown in global aluminium industry. The problem faced by the aluminium major got aggravated due to declining of the demand for aluminium it produced as dumping from China had started flooding the Indian market. Though the problem of unregulated Chinese exports snatching the market share from Indian aluminium producers is still there, Balco has managed to withstand the pressure and come around after doing required maintenance and modern modernization at the Korba plant.

"The SRS resumed production from yesterday (Thursday) with the initial output of 5,000 tonnes," said Deepak Prasad, Balco’s head of metal business. The company has plans to produce 36,000 tonnes of aluminium rolled products in the second half of the financial year, he added.

The SRS would be rolling out all the existing products, plus some new products including hot rolled aluminium coils, hot rolled aluminium plates, cold rolled aluminium coils and strips, cold rolled aluminium sheets and chequered aluminium sheets. The capacity of the SRS would be increased to 100,000 tpa in a phased manner, Prasad said.

About 300 workers who were laid off when operations stopped at the SRS have been taken back.

Balco, in which mining conglomerate Vedanta Ltd, holds a majority stake, is on a major expansion drive. The company would be investing INR 10,000 crore to enhance the capacity to 1 million tonnes per annum. At present, Balco is producing 575,000 tonnes of aluminium per annum.