UAIL alumina refinery to go on stream this month end

The trial production of the 1.5-million tonne per annum (tpa) alumina refinery project of Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL) at Doraguha, near Kasipur in Odisha's Rayagada district, is all set to commence from the last week of the current month.

"Almost all the work is completed and the plant is expected to start trial operation by the end of this month," said a senior officer of the company.

The company, however, will take another three to five months to start commercial operation. The plant has been built at an investment of Rs 7,000 crore.

UAIL is currently a subsidiary of Aditya Birla Group's flagship Hindalco Industries and the implementation of the project has been delayed by nearly two decades due to nagging protests by the project affected people (PAP) and the environmentalists.

At a time when a pal of gloom is hanging over the industrialisation process in the state following closure of one million tonne alumina refinery project of Vedanta Aluminium (VAL) at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district due to raw material supply problems and local protests, the start of operation of UAIL plant is likely to provide some boost to the pro-industry sentiments.

UAIL, however, does not see any difficulty to access raw material to run the plant. The raw material will be procured from the company's captive mine at Baphilimali-spreading over Rayagada and Kalahandi districts, about 17-km from the plant site, sources said.

The mining operation involves opening a new mine with a capacity to produce 8.5 million tonne of bauxite per annum to meet the captive requirement of alumina plant. "We will apply to the government for a bauxite yard near the mining site," a UAIL official said. Utkal Alumina refinery was conceived in 1992 to tap the huge deposit of bauxite in the area and produce alumina. The project, however, was in the line of fire of the environmentalists and affected people since last 21 years.

Worried over the delay in implementation of the refinery, the two original joint venture partners, Tata Sons and Norsk Hydro, had pulled out of the project earlier, while another foreign partner, Alcan, had sold its stake in 2007.

The company proposed to send alumina from this refinery to two upcoming smelter plants of Hindalco at Rengali in Odisha and Mahana Aluminium Project in Madhay Pradesh, sources said.