The Aluminium Industry association has raised an alarm over the recent decision taken by the government for stoppage of secured coal supplies and rakes for Non-Power Sector. The sector representatives raised the issue that the decision may prove as detrimental for Aluminum industry and can likely jeopardize the sustainability as these continuous process based plants are not designed for adhoc shut down and start of operations.

The aluminium industry has sent an SOS to Coal India, demanding the immediate resumption of supplies for survival of the industry that is facing an ‘alarming’ situation following coal shortage. Industry raised that any power outage/ failure (2 hours or more) results in freezing of molten Aluminium in the pots which will lead to shutting down of plant for at least 6 months rendering heavy losses and restart expenses, and once restarted will take almost a year to get desired metal purity.

The Aluminium Association of India president Rahul Sharma wrote in a letter to Coal India Ltd. (CIL) CMD Pramod Agrawal, and marked that the “Aluminium smelting requires uninterrupted quality power supply for production which can be met only through in-house captive power plants (CPPs) which operate 24/7 and 365 days, and have signed fuel-supply agreement with CIL and its subsidiaries for assured long term coal supply,”

The group noted that the recent decision to stop secured supplies and rakes for the non-power sector was detrimental for the industry.

Raising the concern over the decision, the association said that this might bring the manufacturing set ups to a standstill and left with no time to devise a mitigation plan.

As per the letter, “The coal stocks of operational plants have depleted to alarmingly low critical stocks of 2-3 days and plants are forced to operate at reduced power generation with huge risk of closure and threat of loss of huge employment and deterioration of MSMEs,”

Association has cited the import as an unviable solution in this emergency situation to meet coal requirements on account of the exponential rise in global coal prices as well as ocean freight rates, which were at all-time high.

The industry group has sought immediate resumption of coal supply for CPPs against secured linkages for economically viable industry operations. It has also sought “rakes allocation on priority for optimum coal materialization (and) expediting coal linkage/exclusive e-auctions for CPP sub-sector through rail mode at the earliest to provide some relief for the consumers.”