“We have diversified into biomass pellets and green fuel to make our aluminium recycling process more sustainable. Our goal is to go completely green by the end of this year.” – Sudarshan Bagaria, CEO, Bagaria Aluminium Alloys Pvt. Ltd.
AL Circle: Could you please brief us about your journey in producing 1,100 tonnes of secondary aluminium per month at your facility?
Sudarshan Bagaria: We started this journey in 2016, when we installed an aluminium plant and it started functioning in June 2017. At that time, we had never imagined that we would reach 1,100 tonnes per month. Starting from a small facility with only one furnace, we produced 100 tonnes in our first month. And thereafter, the journey continued because the automotive sector as well as the electrical sector were expanding. It reaches eight to 10 per cent minimum every year. Some companies are going by 20 per cent, 25 per cent also. This helped us create avenues with only one thing in mind: our quality. We achieved 1100 tonnes solely due to our quality, which we never compromise on. With around only three rejections in the journey of the round, seven years as of now. We only strive to make good quality goods, which helps us increase our quantities, month on month.
AL Circle: With the recent industry focus on recycled aluminium, how do you accelerate the aluminium recycling process?
Sudarshan Bagaria: Recycling has been our focus from the beginning. Since 2012, we have been recycling and every time increasing the quantity of aluminium is something that we look forward to. How we wish we could connect with more and more people as we are connecting with the AL Circle to develop venues for procurement as well as for sales of our product. We reach out to people in many, many associations and many meetings where they can help us procure more and more scrap. The basic principle is that the more amount of aluminium we generate is the more amount of revenue for our organisation.
AL Circle: Amid the ongoing fluctuations in aluminium prices, do you see ripple effects on the profitability of your business?
Sudarshan Bagaria: We are an import-driven organisation. Initially, our imports were to the tune of 70 per cent to 80 per cent. And now they have fallen to 30 per cent to 40 per cent only because of the variations in aluminium pricing. Now the dependency has been reduced and we have started selling as per our imports. So now we have buffered ourselves largely and are not primarily dependent on the pricing. Whatever imports we have, we already sell the material. And the rest, whatever we procure locally, we sell as we procure to buffer ourselves from the variations in aluminium pricing, even said. So it's a demand-supply-driven market. When the supply is slightly higher than the demand in certain months, in certain cases, the profitability reduces. And when there is a shortage of supply, the profitability stays at a constant, which we assume in the market.
AL Circle: Are the machines you use for recycling backed by automation? How are advanced industrial technologies helping you streamline your daily operations?
Sudarshan Bagaria: There are automations in the market which we are currently not using. For example, the packing of the raw material. A conveyor system can pack the raw material. Then there are more automations when you are segregating the material through a spectrometer. But those are very expensive, which will degrade the investment value because the machine costs are much higher than the returns. We have employed skilled labour in every phase and wherever we are able to incorporate automation, we are doing so. For example, we are using a multi-purpose equipment called the Loadall. We use it as a Hydra JCB as well as a forklift. We are using the skelner for this currently, after the skelner furnace installation, there has been a venture into a TRF, a tilting rotary furnace. So we are looking to expand there. These are mostly to enhance the recoveries of our material, but to automate and replace labor is something which we are not currently looking at. Otherwise, we are going on the watch for more and more, you can say more and more process-enhancing machines rather than automation machines.
AL Circle: What new markets do you aim to tap into for aluminium scrap supply in 2025 and beyond?
Sudarshan Bagaria: We are procuring scrap for that matter. It's not something that we supply to a large extent. So, considering the amount of work being done, if you see the percentage of aluminium scraps supplied to the aluminium total, the total purchase is only around 10%. 10 to 12% is what we're selling. A bigger task at the moment is to reach out to areas which can enable us to procure more and more scrap. We are looking into various regions and various countries and setting up our yards so that we can increase the quantity of aluminium that we are ultimately processing.
AL Circle: How do you plan to build the secondary aluminium industry based on sustainability, as every industrialist is looking forward to that?
Sudarshan Bagaria: The majority of the aluminium recycling industry in and around India are currently using LSHS, or they're using electricity. We have, however, diversified into biomass pellets. These pellets are made out of waste from wooden saw cuttings and pine wood cuttings and agricultural waste like rice and wheat. The husk of them is compressed. And we have installed eight of these machines in our plan, which helps us reduce the sulphur content in the environment. And one machine currently, which is running on furnace oil, we target to go completely green by the end of this one. Also, we are using green fuel and not furnace oil. This green fuel is called plastic. It's derived from plastic. So it's a plastic paralysis process and is a green fuel. And the manufacturer of this oil also has a certificate from the pollution control board that the oil is a green oil like they're basically reusing waste plastic to make this oil. Additionally, there's no sulphur content as well, which is a major harmful product like the component for air pollution.
