Non-Ferrous Minerals and Metals Conference projects positive outlook for India despite bearish market situation

The International Conference on Non-Ferrous Minerals and Metals; organized by Corporate Monitor, which has earned its reputation as a forum for the domestic and international Non-Ferrous industry players as well as industry experts, just concluded its 19th session on July 10, 2015 in Bhubaneswar. Though, currently the non-ferrous metal and mining sector is going through a tough period due to dwindling metal prices, the conference speakers highlighted a positive outlook for the industry, especially for India.

Chairman and Managing Director of NALCO, NR Mohanty, said that the Indian market is becoming highly competitive despite the overall pessimistic situation in the metal sector.

“It is high time for aluminium companies in India to maximise production from scrap. Recycling scrap into aluminium saves 1.8 megajoules of energy compared to the energy consumption during extraction of the metal from ore,” Mohanty said.

Satish Pai, Deputy Managing Director of Hindalco, emphasized the significance of aluminium as the metal of future. In his presentation, he raised concern about the alarmingly low aluminium price and premiums and the influx of aluminium and aluminium products to India from China and Middle East where energy is highly subsidized to facilitate smooth growth of the industry. However, he expected this to be balanced by a steady growth of Indian economy which is expected to be at 7 to 7.5 % in 2015-2016. He projected a very positive outlook on the per capita aluminium consumption in India, which has almost doubled from 1.29 kg in 2008 to about 2.6 kg at present.

"If the economy grows at 7 to 8 %, you may actually see even larger growth in aluminium consumption, because aluminium normally is about 1.5 times the GDP growth compared to other metals", he said. Considering this, he expected the aluminium industry growth rate to go up even further to a 7-8% in the near future.

He highlighted Hindalco's strategy to cut down on input cost and coal consumption and improve its operational efficiency to balance the low metal price. According to him, faster industrialization and urbanization can ramp up aluminium demand in India which is mostly driven by the electrical and transportation sector. He feels the building and construction sector has tremendous potential to boost aluminium demand.

Dr Mukesh Kumar, President & Group Head-Technology & Innovation for Vedanta, insisted on the need for innovation driven business in his presentation. He highlighted continuous fall in commodity prices, depleting raw material sources, non-availability of high grade ores and stringent environmental rules as some of the barriers in the growth of metal and mining sector in India. He emphasized on encouraging R&D for environment friendly technologies, enhancing technical skills and process control for innovation to facilitate long term growth.

Bernard Allais, Director, Sales & Marketing, Rio Tinto Alcan addressed the delegates and talked about the need for proper process control and technological innovation to reduce cost of production and energy consumption, and thus increase revenue to balance the falling metal price.

Outotec through their presentations highlighted various technological innovations that can reduce energy consumption in alumina refinery, cut time and cost through automation in primary smelting and recover rare metals in copper smelting.

The conference played host to a rich congregation of industry experts who presented a number of papers on various technological innovations in the Non-Ferrous sector in the field of energy efficiency, waste management and process automation. As in the past, AlCircle was a part of the conference as a media partner, sharing innovative ideas on the aluminium sector with global delegates.