Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery targets to produce 2 million tonnes of alumina this year, says CEO Rahul Sharma

On asking about the current status of Vedanta’s Lanjigarh alumina refinery’s production capacity, CEO Rahul Sharma said, “Vedanta expects to raise Lanjigarh alumina refinery's capacity to 2 million tonnes this year.”

He also said, “Growth is likely to double in next 5 years," while continued saying that Vedanta in the last year had achieved the production of 1.5 million tonnes, up 25 per cent year-on-year. This year, producing 2 million tonnes of alumina is the target, and going forward the plan is to expand in a phased manner, said Mr. Sharma.

He further added, "As far as bauxite outlook is concerned, we are very happy. Post MMDR Act, now the government is going to auction and we are going to participate seriously and we are aiming for it."

As far as coal is concerned, he said the past one or two years were challenging, especially from aluminium point of view. However, the last quarter saw a big jump in his opinion in terms of Coal India production. According to Sharma, for the first time in the last six quarters, a balance has been made which is 25 per cent CPP and 75 per cent of IPP.

"Only our request to the government will be that please maintain the same ratio, so our request to the government would be that please maintain the same ratio because CPP and IPP both are equally important because that is how you balance industry versus the consumer," Sharma said at the last.