Bhubaneswar, Sep 7 :The Aluminium Association of India(AAI) has sought the central government’s immediate intervention for the urgent resumption of coal supply for the survival of the country’s aluminium industries.
AAI Chairman Satish Pai in a letter to P K Mishra, the Principal secretary to the Prime Minister, urged him to direct Coal India to honor its agreement and supply coal to Aluminium Industry on a priority basis.
The AAI Chairman said the Indian Aluminium industry has invested Rs 1.4 Lakh crores in setting up 4.1 MTPA capacity, providing direct/ indirect employment to more than 10 lakh people and business opportunities to over 4,000 SMEs, in the country’s hinterlands.
If the present coal crisis situation is not addressed immediately it will lead to the collapse of the domestic industry and associated SMEs, he said.
The AAI Chairman said Aluminium production is a highly power-intensive, continuous process industry. There is no provision to switch off and switch on and any power outage of two hours freezes the pots and puts the entire investment at risk.
To meet stringent & continuous power demand, the Aluminium Industry has set up an in-house Captive Power Plant (CPP) of 9,400 MW with an investment of Rs. 50,000 crores
With the untiring efforts of Coal India and subsidiaries, the power sector situation has improved significantly with stocks of over 13 days from as low as 3-4 days in Aug-Sept 2021.
However, this has come at an enormous cost to the non-power sector and the worst impacted are the CPPs of the Aluminium industry, which continues to struggle for getting un-interrupted coal supplies resulting in a backlog of over 6,200+ rakes for the entire non-power sector (25 Million Ton of Coal).
Most of the available coal and rakes are being divertep to the Power sector as “Priority Coal Supplies”, while the CPPs are starving and facing an acute coal crunch.
Pai further said despite record coal production and dispatches, coal under Fuel Supply Agreements (FSAs) are being denied to CPPs with overall materialisation dropping to as low as 55 percent, even below the trigger level of 75 percent,while supplies by Rail are almost nil.
Stopping these CPPs and forcing the Aluminium industry to resort to huge power draw from the grid is not only burdening Indian Rail infrastructure but also raising power prices for the public at large, the AAI Chairman said.
Further, the shortage of raw materials and Aluminium inputs to other key industries will lead to increased imports and loss of export earnings.
He said continued coal shortage will also lead to non-availability of the derailment manufacturing sector and urged Mishra to intervene and direct Coal India to honour its agreement and supply coal on priority to tide over the extreme difficulties being faced by the aluminum industries which will bring these industries to standstill.