Indian aluminium industry body Aluminium Association of India (AAI) has approached the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) seeking a solution to the looming coal supply shortage. The shortage has put 7.5 lakh jobs at stake and upcoming investments in the sector are being weighed down upon by a heavy debt load amounting to INR 70,000 crore.
The dry coke shortfall against linkages is 78 per cent in case of Hindalco, 57 per cent for Vedanta, and 21 per cent for Balco, the AAI informed.
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“Coal security is the most critical aspect of sustainable operations and ramp-up of aluminium smelter", AAI said in a letter to the PMO adding that power contributes to 45 per cent of the overall production cost. "Any power outage/failure (4 hours or more) results in freezing of aluminium pots and shutting down of plant for at least 6 months rendering heavy losses."
Accordingly AAI sought directions to Coal India to make the committed quantity of coal available to them. This will be necessary to expedite the resolution for "sustainability of Indian aluminium industry."
The Association further said in its letter that the recent low coal materialisation has heavily impacted upon the investments made by the industry in setting up 8,700 mw captive power plant capacity to meet increased power requirement for various smelter operations.
Indian aluminium industry’s earnings from exports accounted for US$3.2 billion of the total government forex earnings in 2016-17.
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