Aluminium companies have, once again, moved the Prime Minister’s Office over protracted coal shortage and highlighted the hardship faced by the industry amid the ongoing V-shaped economic recovery.
For the past seven months, the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) said several plants have been staring at an imminent closure in the absence of adequate coal supply by Coal India (CIL) and its subsidiaries. With the industry’s captive power plants (CPPs) left with critically low coal stocks of only 3-4 days, as against the prescribed 15 days, there is a possibility that those employed at the plants and the several thousand ancillary and downstream industries may struggle to remain gainfully employed in the coming days, it said.
With CIL continuing to give unjustifiable priority to the power sector despite improved coal stocks, the supplies to the non-power sector have declined by a staggering 18 per cent between last September and January compared to the same period last year. At the same time, coal stocks for the power sector have improved by 20 per cent in the same reporting duration, said the letter sent to the PMO.
Uninterrupted supply
The aluminium industry requires uninterrupted power supply through captive power plants operating throughout the year. According to the AAI, the industry has invested over ₹50,000 crore to set up CPPs near the coal mine pit heads that are designed to operate on domestic coal grades from these mines. The coal demand for CPPs cannot be met through imports, due to logistics issue as large quantity of imports could choke the rail network and ports in India.
Producing a single tonne of aluminium requires nearly 14,500 units of continuous power. Any outage of over two hours can cause the molten aluminium in the smelting pots to freeze, leading to plant shutdown for nearly six months and further a year to generate metal at the desired purity levels again.
With CPPs already facing a backlog of over 1,200 rakes, the AAI has urged the PMO to ensure a supply of at least 25-30 coal rakes per day to the sector. Now that the power sector has 9-10 days of coal stocks, there is no feasible reason why the CIL and its subsidiaries should not increase supplies to the non-power sector, it said.