Anil Agarwal led Vedanta plans to invest INR 10,000 crore to set up ‘Aluminium Park’ in Odisha

Anil Agarwal led Vedanta Ltd., a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Limited, counted as one of the world's leading diversified natural resource companies plans to invest INR 10,000 crore in setting up an aluminium park in Odisha, an eastern state in India to encourage companies that use the metal to set up their manufacturing units in the facility.

On 27th May 2021, the Company said: “This aluminium park is along the lines of major industrial towns in other parts of India. It will generate additional livelihood for more than 100,000 people and will touch the lives of more than 400,000.”

The proposed aluminium park will benefit small and medium downstream enterprises by setting up their manufacturing units and extract hot metal from Vedanta’s aluminium smelter in Jharsuguda to produce their end-products.

The Company further added: “With an objective to develop SMEs and MSMEs in Jharsuguda, Vedanta is committed to supplying 300,000 tonnes of molten aluminium (hot metal) to the downstream industries that shall set up their facilities in the proposed aluminium park.”

Presently, the discussions are in progress between Vedanta and Govt. of Odisha to finalize the project.

“Full capacity expansion and operation has to be enabled through the availability of power at a competitive price to keep the cost of aluminium production viable for the downstream industry,” Vedanta said.

Since FY16, Odisha has surplus power, which it has been trying to sell; however, Vedanta has urged the state to consider sanctioning this surplus power for use in the proposed aluminium park, so that it can reduce the production cost.

“This way, the power of the state remains within the state and downstream industry and job opportunities are created,” the company concluded.