AAI hosts the national seminar on Aluminium - The Strategic Metal

What’s up? What had you been up to this week?

I’d been to the national level seminar on ‘Aluminium – The Strategic Metal’ this Thursday. It was organised by the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) and presided over by the Union Mines Secretary - Mr. Balwinder Kumar and others. It was quite interesting to know about developments in the aluminum industry. Plus the venue was Hotel Mayfair. Who could miss that?

Now tell me what happened there?

In the welcome address by Dr. TK Chand, the president of AAI and CMD of NALCO, he began by pointing out that Aluminium metal is always associated with 3 important words – ‘Strategic, Green & Future’. The metal has numerous applications and that Odisha has more than half of the country’s bauxite reserves. However, all is not well at the moment. Sluggish market conditions, vagaries of the commodity cycle, cheap imports from China & the Middle East has hit the Indian Aluminum Industry quite badly. Even though we have 4 million tonnes of production capacity, we are only utilizing less than 2.5 million tonnes. In light of the following difficulties, some pertinent issues were raised before the Government of India.

I see. We are up against a mountain of challenges!

Hold your horses. The Union Mines Secretary also had something to say. 

1. The plea for an Aluminium Development Council was granted to benefit the primary and secondary producers, downstream industries and customers. More monies would be spent on R&D and value addition processes through the council which will give a huge boost to aluminium promotion in the domestic and international market. 
2. For the cost benefit of the industry, the Ministry of Mines would write to the Ministry of Railways to treat the railway freight costs of bauxite to be consider at par with limestone
3. Alumina would be classified as a non-metal entity instead of metal and clubbed with bauxite's railway freight cost at par with limestone. 

The domestic demand and consumption bandwidth will also increase with the construction of upcoming Smart Cities and Freight corridors in association with campaigns like Make in India and Skill India.

That’s some relief! But do tell me about a proposed Aluminium Park. It was out in the papers.

Glad you asked. Vedanta Aluminium CEO – Mr. Abhijit Pati proposal the idea of an Aluminum Park. He said that an integrated aluminium ecosystem needs to be built for forward integration based on a large pool of molten metal. Logistics being a major cost carrier for the industry, providing the metal in the molten form directly will eliminate major costs for the dependent secondary and the tertiary consumers. There are other advantages as well – assured supply of raw material, diversified offerings to different downstream investors, energy savings to a tune of 30% and a positive impact on environment.

Great! Odisha needs to gear up for these interesting developments now.

Yes! Time for a good news. With the footprints of all the major primary aluminium producers in Odisha, Bhubaneswar is soon poised to the Aluminium capital of India! 

Here's another one! Watch out for this space because the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ALUMINIUM (INCAL) is to be organised at Bhubaneswar in early 2017. The theme of the Conference will be 'Make in India: Aluminium the Strategic Metal'