OMC's Kodingamali mine may feed Vedanta's Lanjigarh refinery

Vedanta has been pleading for alternative bauxite mines after environment ministry red flagged Niyamgiri bauxite mining project

Waking up to the acute crisis faced by Vedanta's Lanjigarh alumina refinery, the Odisha government on Wednesday said it will make arrangements for bauxite supplies for the ailing refinery from Kodingamali mines owned by its PSU Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC). The bauxite mines of OMC are spread over an area of 428.31 hectares (ha) in Koraput and Rayagada districts.

"We will make arrangements for bauxite supplies to Vedanta plant from OMC's Kodingamali mines.
Bauxite supplies can take off once production starts from the mines", said Odisha's steel & mines minister Prafulla Mallick.

Vedanta has been pleading for alternative bauxite mines to the state government after the Union environment ministry red flagged the Niyamgiri bauxite mining project. The ministry's decision stemmed from a referendum in which participating local tribals unanimously nixed the mining plan in 2013.

As of now, Vedanta is completely dependent on externally sourced bauxite to run the Lanjigarh refinery with an approved capacity of four million tonne a year. But Vedanta was hardly able to run it at its full design capacity as local bauxite supplies had dried up.

Last year, Vedanta had idled one stream of the Lanjigarh refinery to cut down on its mounting losses. But, Vedanta, in this fiscal, has revived the second stream operations at the refinery and is looking at an alumina production of 1.4 million tonne this fiscal.

Present, nearly 70 per cent of the bauxite requirement of the Lanjigarh refinery was met by sourcing from other states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Vedanta was importing the balance 30 per cent from resource rich nations like New Guinea.