Vedanta shuts 1 million mt alumina site on bauxite crunch

摘要

India’s Vedanta Resources shut its sole aluminanrefinery over the weekend due to a shortage ofnbauxite, a company source said Monday. Then1 million mt/year plant is located in Lanjigarh,nOrissa. Vedanta has been facing a feedstocknshortage for years but the problem has becomenworse since August this year. Company spokesmannArun Bhatt said September 10 that the refinery would likely be completely shut bynDecember 5 due to the shortage. Bhattnsaid then: “We have no bauxite stocksnnow and are producing as and when wenget supply. We’ve already been graduallynshutting down since August, and will bencompletely shut by December 5.” Thenduration of the outage would depend onnbauxite supply, he added. Vedanta supplementsnits alumina output with importsnfrom Australia to support its aluminumnsmelters, and is expected to increase itsnalumina imports while production is curtailed.n“The smelters will run on importednalumina; there will be no cuts,” Bhattnsaid earlier. Vedanta’s bauxite suppliesnhave run low as its suppliers’ miningnlicenses in India have expired, and theynare unable to operate until new environmentalnpermits are granted. Vedanta hasntwo smelters at Jharsuguda, Orissa, andnat Korba, Chattisgarh, that can turn out antotal 745,000 mt/year of aluminum. Twonnew smelters with a combined capacitynof 1.575 million mt/year are technicallynready for startup but no timeline has beennset, another company source told Plattsnearlier. The completed Korba-II unit cannproduce 325,000 mt/year while the soonto-nbe-completed Jharsuguda-II unit cannmake 1.25 million mt/year.