Bhubaneswar: Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday shot off a letter to Union Minister of Coal, Mines Prahalad Joshi urging the latter to increase the capacity of Nalco’s Aluminium smelter plant at Angul.
In his letter, Pradhan has urged Joshi to take necessary steps for increasing Nalco smelter plant’s capacity to 1 MTPA from existing 0.46 MTPA in view of availability of alumina at Angul (1.5 MTPA).
The National Aluminium Company (NALCO) is undertaking a brownfield expansion project for their Aluminium Smelter Plant at Angul district in Odisha.
The expansion project is being undertaken to increase the capacity to 1 MTPA from 0.46 MTPA, which includes construction of a 144 MW feeder Captive Power Plant (CPP). The cost of the project is estimated to be around Rs 22,000 crore and at present it is still at the land acquisition stage, wrote Pradhan in his letter.
Nalco’s bauxite production capacity will increase from 7.3 MTPA to 10 MTPA after operationalisation of Pottangi mines. Out of this, up to 3.1 MPTA consists of Alumina which has potential to be produced into 1.5 MTPA of aluminium.
“Aluminium smelting is a highly power intensive process and the feasibility of this brownfield expansion project is heavily dependent on a steady supply of affordable coal to the 1400 MW CPP for uninterrupted bulk generation of power. I propose for the commissioning of the feeder CPP for the brownfield expansion project in Angul district which will benefit from logistical efficiencies due to its strategic location in proximity to the smelter unit and coal block,” Pradhan’s letter read.