Vedanta to expand Odisha alumina refinery to 6 MT without Niyamgiri

Mining baron Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd plans to expand its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha to 6 million tonnes per annum by 2021 using alternate bauxite resources as it looks beyond the failed Niyamgiri experiment, a top company official said.

The firm believes there are enough alternate resources of bauxite available to feed the expansion and has moved beyond the previously pursued high-quality bauxite beneath the pristine Niyamgiri hills, its CEO for Alumina and Power Business Ajay Kumar Dixit said.

The Lanjigarh plant produced around 1.2 million tonnes of alumina last fiscal and has a current capacity of 2 million tonnes.

Refusing to give cost estimates, Dixit said while the plant currently imports 2.5-3 million tonnes of bauxite and sources almost an equal volume from domestic mines, the expansion project would need a total of 18 million tonnes of bauxite annually.

"A lot of stigma was attached whether Vedanta could run without Niyamgiri. The fact is Niyamgiri would have given us 2.5-3 million tonnes, whose absence hardly makes any difference (to the expansion)," he said. "The ghost of Niyamgiri is done and dusted. We are well past it."