Vedanta looking for bauxite supplies to restart alumina refinery in Odisha

The Vedanta Group is hopeful of tying up bauxite supplies to restart its alumina refinery in Lanjigarh, Odisha within the next 1-2 months.

Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL), the group arm which operates the unit, is in talks with a clutch of private miners in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh besides Gujarat to source more than half of its annual requirement of 30 lakh tonnes of bauxite. The arrangement is expected to ensure uninterrupted supplies of bauxite to the refinery, since Vedanta's own sources of bauxite from Niyamgiri hills is unlikely to happen before one year.

"We are exploring the option of sourcing bauxite from 4-5 states and are in talks with private miners in these states. We are hopeful of getting nearly 16 lakh tonnes from these miners. We will source the remaining 14 lakh tonnes of bauxite from our group company, Balco," Mukesh Kumar, president & COO, VAL said.

The one-million tonne Lanjigarh refinery has been closed since December last year due to paucity of bauxite, a key raw material used to produce alumina which is an intermediate product in the production of aluminium metal.

Of the 16 lakh tonne to be sourced from outside Odisha, VAL is slated to procure around 5-6 lakh tonnes per annum (ltpa) from the three states. Compared to this, before VAL was forced to shut down the refinery in December 2012, it was sourcing nearly 4 ltpa from Andhra Pradesh, another 4 ltpa from Jharkhand, while Chhattisgarh accounted for 2-2.5 ltpa and 3 ltpa was being procured from Gujarat.