NALCO’s gallium plan remains on paper - a missed opportunity as critical minerals race heats up?

Nearly ten years after announcing plans to extract gallium, National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) has yet to translate intent into execution.  Back in 2016, the public sector aluminium producer had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to jointly develop technology for recovering gallium from Bayer liquor, a sodium aluminate solution generated during alumina refining.

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Then NALCO chairman Tapan Kumar Chand described the initiative as the company’s first research and development collaboration with BARC, aimed at developing domestic technology for a “strategic” metal in the national interest. Yet, a decade later, there is little to show on the ground.

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In a recent note on the company, Motilal Oswal Financial Services reported that NALCO informed analysts that a pilot plant was “being set up” to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of gallium extraction, an indication that the project remains at a preliminary stage.

Gallium’s strategic relevance

The metal has become central to the next generation of semiconductor technologies,  especially as a key alternative to silicon. Gallium nitride (GaN) chips offer major performance advantages for being small, perfect for operating in higher currents and voltages, and dissipating heat more efficiently. 

For instance, a power device rated at 1200 volts and 30 amps would occupy roughly 30 square millimetres if made from silicon. The same functionality using GaN would require only about 2 square millimetres. These properties also make GaN indispensable in defence applications, especially in radar systems. Radars built with GaN components can transmit stronger signals, enabling the detection of targets at much greater distances.

The bauxite deposits in Odisha come with higher concentrations of gallium, which could be strategically important for NALCO at this point of time. According to industry experts, bauxite typically holds between 30 and 80 parts per million of gallium. Hence, even with conservative recovery rates, an annual production of around 20 tonnes of gallium is considered feasible.

However, NALCO did not respond to queries seeking details on the project’s status, despite repeated requests.

Is this a missed opportunity?

From the commercial perspective, the modest relative to NALCO’s overall scale is not insignificant. According to data from Strategic Metals Invest, gallium prices have risen sharply over the years from about USD 274 per kilogram in January 2018 to roughly USD 2101 per kilogram at present.

At current prices, 20 tonnes of gallium production would generate revenue of around INR 4,000 million ( USD 44.2 million)  annually. While this would be small compared with NALCO’s turnover of INR 167 billion ( USD 1.9 billion) in 2024–25, it comes with broader significance in future.

Amidst supply chain vulnerabilities and growing global competition over critical minerals, the domestic production of gallium lies strategically beyond balance sheets. Still, it’s been almost a decade  after positioning itself as a potential source of this strategic metal. Such a prolonged gestation on NALCO’s part raises questions about execution, urgency, and missed opportunity.

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