Monsoon delays Novelis' India debut

The monsoon has played spoilsport in the much-awaited debut of Novelis in India.

The Rogerstone can-body plant has been dismantled and shifted to Hindalco’s Hirakud plant in Orissa. The plant was scheduled to start production in October. The company has now said the plant would be commissioned in early 2012.

Debu Bhattacharya, managing director, Hindalco Industries, said the Hirakud Flat Rolled Products project is expected to come up by early 2012.

According to the earlier plan, the plant was supposed to be commissioned by October, but this was delayed by a few months, owing to the heavy monsoon in different parts of the country. Sunirmal Talukdar, chief financial officer, Hindalco told Business Standard the entire machinery from the Rogerstone plant had arrived and the plant would be operational by early 2012.

This is not the first time a Hindalco project in Hirakud, Orissa, has been delayed due to torrential rains. Last year, the company planned to expand its aluminium smelting capacity from 155 ktpa to 161 ktpa. The deadline for this was September 2010, but was delayed by three months due to heavy rains, which resulted in power outages. The company had also lost 20,000 tonne of white metal production due to the rains.

The expansion of the Hirakud smelter (from 161 ktpa to 213 ktpa) and the power plant (367 Mw to 467 Mw) expansion is also expected to be completed by early 2012. The company did not give a specific date of the commissioning.

Hindalco, in its bid to tap the growing automotive, beverage cans, apart from other products, had decided to dismantle to Novelis’ Rogerstone plant and bring it to India. The company is spending Rs 600 crore in the first phase of the project, which would have a capacity of 135 kpta. The total size of the project is estimated at 500 ktpa.

Another reason to shift the plant to India was the high cost of production in Rogerstone, Britain. The plant was increasingly getting unsustainable for the company to compete with cheaper products from countries like China. Therefore, Hindalco decided to shift the manufacturing of this flat aluminium products to India. It plans to serve the domestic, as well as the export market, through this plant.

Hindalco plans to use the Novelis brand to sell the products in India.