| Surveys done earlier had estimated the availability of bauxite ore in the Visakhapatnam agency area to be around 600 million tonnes. |
| Most of the bauxite ore is located in the thick forest areas, which is why the bauxite reserves in the state had remained untouched even after several national and foreign agencies had evinced interest to utilise the ore in the last three decades. |
| The most commercially mined aluminium ore is bauxite, as it has the highest content of the base metal. Primary aluminium production process is across three stages wherein first bauxite is mined, followed by the refining of bauxite to alumina and finally the smelting of alumina to aluminium. |
| India has the fifth largest bauxite reserves in the world with deposits of about 3 billion tonnes or an estimated five per cent of the world's deposits. On an average the production of a tonne of aluminium requires two tonnes of alumina while production of a tonne of alumina would requires between two and three tonnes of bauxite. |
| Nalco recently indicated to the state government's mining department that it would consider setting up a plant with a capacity between one and two million tonnes. The public sector company had made a similar proposal in the past too but the plans were kept in cold storage due to various hiccups. |
| Apart from this, a technical team of Jindal Iron and Steel Corporation Limited, led by the company's joint managing director and chief executive officer Raman Madhok, met B Satyanarayana, minister for major industries, with a similar proposal recently. |
| However, one of the major constraints here is that the quantity of bauxite ore available in the area cannot accommodate the two plants with the above capacity. |
| "That is why we have suggested to the Jindal team to reduce their proposed capacity. But they said that an aluminium plant below one-million tonne capacity is unviable," P Dayasankar, director of the state mining department, told Business Standard. |
| The last instance when the bauxite subject grabbed the headlines was when N Chandrababu Naidu was in power. With the Supreme Court ruling against the involvement of private agencies in mining in the scheduled tribal areas, Naidu's efforts to engage a Dubai-based firm in the bauxite mining activities did not go further. The same judgement, however, allowed the entry of government agencies into tribal areas for mining. |
| The state government, therefore, has now decided to engage the Andhra Pradesh Mining Development Corporation (APMDC) for future bauxite mining in joint ventures with other public sector agencies like Nalco and NMDC. |
| "The Jerrala area, which is covered with thick forest (on the side of East Godavari district), has around 450 million tonnes of bauxite ore deposits. A tie-up for mining with Nalco is likely as it is easy for a public sector company to get all the necessary clearances for operating in this area," Dayasankar said. According to him, APMDC will bid for bauxite mining leases in this area. |
| The only place that falls outside the forest area is the Araku block, which has around 60 million tonnes of bauxite deposits. The government, at present, is keen to offer ore from this area to the Jindals. This though falls short of the company's proposed requirement of 200-300 million tonnes of bauxite ore. |
| "We have asked the officials to study the proposals given by the Jindal team. The government as well as the company can arrive at a decision only after studying all the possibilities," the state minister for major industries told Business Standard. |
| According to unconfirmed reports, Nalco is mulling high investments to tap the bauxite reserves in Andhra Pradesh. Besides the aluminium plant, the JMD of Jindal has also indicated their proposal to set up a big power plant, mostly for the captive requirements, the minister said. |
| Mineable decisions |
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