National Aluminium Company Ltd. (Nalco), the navratna PSU under Ministry of Mines, has achieved the highest-ever bauxite production of 50.03 lakh tones in 2011-12, against the previous best of 48.79 lakh tonnes in 2009-10.
While the alumina refinery produced 16.87 lakh tonnes of alumina hydrate, which is also an all-time high. The earlier record was 15.92 lakh tonnes in 2009-10. However, during the year, the metal production of the company slumped marginally from 4.44 lakh tonnes to 4.13 lakh tonnes.
BL Bagra, Chairman cum Managing Director, Nalco, said, coal shortage and dwindling LME prices forced the company to cut down its metal production to some extent. “It was not commercially viable to produce more metal using expensive imported coal,” Bagra added.
“However, the smelter has achieved a capacity utilization of 90 per cent since remaining of pots are under shut down since September 2011, due to coal supply constraint,” he added. The net power generation by company’s captive power plant was 6,200 million units.
