If India's aluminium volume is booked for the next 5 years, will planned expansions change the scenario?

India's aluminium producers are building smelters, expanding refineries, opening mines and writing investment cheques worth more than INR 640 billion. Yet despite all that activity, the industry faces a rather uncomfortable question: what happens when demand grows faster than capacity can be built?

The timing of that question is hard to ignore as domestic aluminium demand is projected to climb from 4.5 million tonnes to 8.3 million tonnes by 2030, while the country is already importing close to 3 million tonnes of aluminium products every year to bridge supply gaps. Industry projections suggest imports could account for nearly 55 per cent of India's requirements in FY2025-26, contributing to a metals trade deficit of roughly USD 3.4 billion, or about INR 300 billion.

At first glance, the solution for the country positioning itself as a manufacturing powerhouse, and battling that size of a bill can seem straightforward. Just produce more metal.