Centre may allocate Pottangi mines to Nalco in a month

The mines are being allocated to Nalco to meet the needs of its upcoming one-million-tonne alumina refinery

The Union mines ministry has assured to allocate the Pottangi bauxite deposits to National Aluminium Company (Nalco) soon, a top company official said.

"The state government has already recommended grant of Pottangi mines in favour of Nalco. The Union mines secretary said the allocation would be done to the PSU within a month", said Nalco's chairman and managing director (CMD) T K Chand.

Union mines secretary Balwinder Kumar today called on chief minister Naveen Patnaik and the chief secretary G C Pati.

"Nalco will set up a new alumina refinery at Damanjodi. It will have a capacity of one million tonne. The Pottangi mines would be allocated to Nalco to meet this refinery's requirement", Kumar said.

The Pottangi mines with 70 million tonne bauxite reserve would feed Nalco's new refinery of one million tonne capacity planned at Damanjodi. Nalco is adding a new stream to its existing Damanjodi refinery having capacity of 2.275 million tonne per annum (mtpa).

Recently, Nalco had submitted Rs 300 crore CSR (corporate social responsibility) package to the state government for the Pottangi deposits. The CSR projects would be implemented at Damanjodi, Angul and other parts of Odisha.

The state government recently extended the validity of Nalco's Panchpatmalli lease in Koraput district up to 2020.

"Nalco would be investing Rs 6,000 crore on the refinery. Additionally, we will invest Rs 2000 crore on development of Utkal D and E coal blocks", said the company's CMD.

Both the coal blocks are located in the vicinity of Nalco's 0.46 million tonne aluminium smelting facility at Angul.

The Utkal E block was allotted to the navratna PSU ( public sector undertaking) by the Centre in 2004. But the block stood de-allocated after the Supreme Court order that cancelled allocation of 204 coal blocks. Since the de-allocation, Nalco was pursuing with the Government of India for re-allocation of coal blocks in its favour since investment had already been made on its end-use plant.

The coal blocks would ensure smooth operations of Nalco's existing aluminium smelter at Angul. Besides this, Nalco has announced a new smelting facility of 0.5 mtpa capacity and 1050 captive power plant (CPP) in Sundargarh district at a cost of Rs 22,000 crore.

Beyond Odisha, Nalco is pursuing the 0.5 mtpa smelter project at Kutch (Gujarat) based on bauxite supplies from Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC).

In the overseas market, Nalco is exploring possibilities to set up a greenfield smelter at a location where energy is available at competitive price. Nalco has shortlisted Iran, Indonesia and Oman as possible locations for the overseas smelter.