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The Aluminum Association of India (AAI) has sought the Ministry of Coal’s intervention to increase coal rakes for the Aluminium industry.
“To avoid closure of Aluminium industry, we earnestly request your kind intervention to normalise the precarious situation with immediate resumption of coal and rakes supply for highly power intensive Aluminium industry CPPs, and earmarking at least 25-30 coal rakes per day for economically viable and sustainable industry operations,” the AAI wrote to the secretary, Ministry of Coal.
Depleted coal stocks
It said that the Captive Power Plants (CPP) of Aluminium industry are facing alarmingly depleted coal stocks of only 3-4 days against the prescribed level of 15 days. Even though there is improved availability of coal, non-availability of rakes for non-regulated sectors is a major concern.
It explained that since August, 2021, the Non-Regulated Sector is struggling to get un-interrupted coal supplies for continued operations with supplies limited to just 40-50 per cent of required coal.
Supply backlog
The Ministry of Coal and CIL has revived domestic coal production and increased the dispatch to ease the coal supply crisis situation for the Power Sector. “The overall daily rakes dispatched has increased from 242 rakes/day in September 2021 to 289 rakes/day in December 2021,” it explained. However, the AAI said that there was a backlog, and hence more help was needed.
“There is a backlog of over 6,000 coal rakes as most of the available coal and rakes are being diverted to the Power Sector as “Priority Coal Supplies”. We understand now that the Power Sector coal inventory situation has drastically improved to around 10 days’ from 2-3 days in the months of Sept–Oct, 2021.”
The AAI further justified that aluminium is a power intensive continuous process industry, which requires uninterrupted steady power supply 24/7, 365 days.
“Any power outage/ failure (2 hours or more) results in freezing of molten Aluminium in the pots, leading to shut down of plant for at least 6 months, and once restarted will take almost a year to get desired metal purity leading to heavy financial losses. Hence all the aluminium smelters have set up captive thermal power plants to meet this requirement.”
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