Odisha's Kodingamali bauxite mine to feed Vedanta's Lanjigarh alumina refinery

The Government of Odisha has finally woken up to the acute raw material crisis that forced metal and mining giant Vedanta to partially close down its alumina refinery in Lanjigarh in December last year. The State government said on Wednesday that it will provide bauxite for the ailing refinery from the Kodingamali bauxite mines in Koraput district. The bauxite mines, spread over an area of 428.31 hectares (ha) area, are owned by the PSU Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC).

"We will make arrangements for bauxite supplies to Vedanta plant from OMC's Kodingamali mines. Bauxite supplies can take off once production starts from the mines", said Odisha's steel & mines minister Prafulla Mallick.



The Lanjigarh alumina refinery has been depending on bauxite procured from states like Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh since its inception. Some portion of the raw material need was even met through imports from countries like New Guinea. Even though the refinery is surrounded by bauxite deposits, the State government has not been able to make any suitable arrangement for the refinery's raw material requirement; as a result, the alumina refinery with a capacity of four million tonne a year, could not be operated at its full capacity ever, leading to huge loss quarter after quarter.

Vedanta has been waging a long war to get things sorted, but unable to make any headway, it decided to halve output at the refinery last year to pare down the mounting losses.

Now that the Odisha government has promised to make arrangement for bauxite supply, it is expected that the refinery will get back to its normal functioning soon.

However, Vedanta has revived the second stream operations at the alumina refinery lately, and is looking at an alumina production of 1.4 million tonne this fiscal. 

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