Coal crisis forces Nalco to cut aluminium output

Acute coal crisis has forced National Aluminium Company (Nalco) to shut down one 120 Mw unit of its captive power plant (CPP) at Angul. This has cut down power supply to the company’s smelter at the same location by about 90 Mw resulting in 13.6 per cent reduction in daily aluminium output.

Faced with short supply of coal from the Mahanadi Coalfield Limited (MCL), the company authorities shut down one unit of its 960 Mw CPP on Monday. The CPP has a total of eight units.

This has reduced supply of power to the company smelter, also at Angul, by about 90 Mw. As a result, the aluminium output has come from an average of 1100 tonne per day to about 950 tonne. Nalco, at present, is operating 735 pots in the smelter keeping another five as stand by, official sources said.

With the crisis deepening an emergent meeting was held between Nalco and MCL officials at Talcher yesterday to carve out steps to save the power plant which had recently begun power generation from all the eight units instead of seven earlier to meet the excess demand arising out of expansion of smelter plant capacity.

“It will take five to six days to restore the eighth unit after coal supply is resumed on expected line”, said the official. He said, it was decided in the meeting with the MCL officials that the company will get 8,000 to 10,000 tonne of coal per day from linked Bharatapur mine while another 7,000 tonne coal will be made available by railway network from other mines in the Talcher coalfield.

Keeping in view such exigencies, Nalco has decided to import 2.5 lakh tonne of coal this year in addition to two lakh tonne of coal for which order has already been placed. Out of the ordered coal, 50,000 tonne of washed coal has reached the plant. Some imported coal has also arrived at Paradip port which awaits transportation to Nalco.

Nalco sources said, they are importing coal to meet the gap in supply of local coal, but they cannot entirely run the CPP on imported coal as it would escalate the cost. The company uses imported coal in the plant after blending it with cheaper MCL coal at the ratio of 15; 85.