Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday wrote a letter to Union Coal and Mines Minister Prahlad Joshi proposing him for commencement of Nalco’s brown-field expansion project for its aluminium smelter plant at Angul.
Pradhan said Nalco is undertaking expansion project for its smelter plant to increase its capacity from 0.46 MTPA to 1 MTPA, which includes construction of a 1400-MW feeder Captive Power Plant (CPP). The project, which is currently at land acquisition stage, is estimated to cost around Rs 22,000 crore. “Nalco’s bauxite production capacity will increase from 7.3 MTPA to 10.5 MTPA after operationalisation of Pottangi mines. Out of this, up to 3.1 MPTA consists of alumina which has potential to be produced into 1.5 MTPA of aluminium.
Worth mentioning, aluminium smelting is a highly power intensive process and feasibility of brownfield expansion project is heavily dependent on a steady supply of affordable coal to1400-MW feeder CPP for uninterrupted bulk generation of power,” he pointed out in letter..
