Bhubaneswar: The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) has expressed concern over coal crisis in the country.

The AAI,in a press release on Saturday, said that today also, aluminium industry has not received any relief with respect to the ongoing coal supply crisis.

The release said that Indian aluminium plants are grappling with critically low levels of coal stock, with no recourse or alternative means to meet their power needs and keep the plants operational. If coal supply is not restored immediately, it would lead to an irrevocable collateral damage of these national assets, it added.

Any power outage in Aluminium plant will lead to catastrophic impact & complete shutdown which will take minimum 12 Months of recovery, resulting in job loss of more than 8 lakh people, Banks will have debt exposure of over Rs.1 Lakh Crores and additional National forex loss of Rs. 90,000 Crs. (~$ 12 Billion)

Aluminium industry with total investments of Rs.1.4 lakh crores ($ 20 billion) have a capacity of 4.1 MTPA (2nd Largest in the World) which creates livelihood for over 8 Lakh people and 4,000 SMEs.

Aluminium production is a 24*7, 365 days continuous process industry there is no provision to switch off andswitch on. It is highly power intensive industry, just to illustrate 1 tonneof aluminium requires 14,500 units of continuous power which is ~ 15 times in comparison to Steel (~ 1000 Units per Ton) & 145 times as that for Cement (~100 Units per Ton)

To meet stringent & continuous Power demand Aluminium Industry has set up their inhouse Captive Power Plant CPPs of ~ 9,400 MW (9.4 GW i.e. 34% of Thermal CPP capacity of the country) with an investment of ~ Rs. 50,000 Crs.

Uninterrupted Power requirement of 9.4 GW (9,400 MW) of Aluminium industry is ~ 6% of the total country’s demand (145 GW) and 123% of total energy traded at the Indian Energy Exchange (~ 7.6 GW in 2021). Therefore, technically it is not feasible to get this massive power from the power Grid.

Therefore, Aluminium Industry cannot import Power and can only meet their power requirement through CPPs for which Aluminium Industry requires1.5 Lakh Ton of domestic coal daily (~ 55 million Ton every year)

To meet the extensive Coal demand, Aluminium Industry has set up plants in vicinity of Coal bearing areas, with Power plants designed to operate on domestic coal.

In spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat and commitments of domestic coal availability, the Aluminium Industry has planned their operation, any import coal arrival will take 90-120 days of cycle period from purchase to consumption, therefore sudden decision by Ministry of Coal / Coal India to stop the domestic coal supply to the Aluminium Industry has resulted in complete chaos.

Coal India to immediately resume continuous Coal Supply to the Aluminium Industry to prevent closure of the Aluminium industry.