What should have happened to demand and prices of industrial commodities in a normal business cycle was brought forward with suddenness in the third quarter of 2008 leaving producers across the board struggling to keep their head above water. It is only now that the world is seeing some recovery, thanks to the efficacy of stimulus programmes.
The destruction of demand in the wake of the memory’s bitterest recession saw a major collapse in profits of the country’s leading aluminium producers, Hindalco and National Aluminium Company (Nalco), during 2008-09 and they continued to see further profit erosion through the first three quarters of this financial year. The effective import duty being marginal, the local metal prices closely follow the pattern set at LME plus customs and freight. And since LME transactions are all dollar denominated, prices here are also impacted by the currency movements.
Shedding of profits was unavoidable as the spot unit price realisation on LME was down to a shockingly low of $1,250 a tonne at one point last year and three-month price is now around $2,120 a tonne, down from $2,230 a tonne a couple of weeks ago. What in the circumstances is gratifying about our aluminium industry is that neither of our two constituents cowered is unlike their counterparts in other places, including China when metal prices were rapidly beaten down. The recession caused such an overwhelming shock that Hindalco chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla indulged in introspecting that “if a downturn of this magnitude was to persist for some time, would we be the last man standing,” meaning whether his company, which also has one foot in copper would emerge from the crisis least scathed.
The recessionary impact was particularly severe on Hindalco since it has a large profile in the value added downstream products. The company, like its peer Nalco, sought remission from the crisis by sweating assets, making more primary metal and giving a push to brownfield expansion while chasing new projects with undiminished vigour.
Not only China, burdened as it is with many high cost and polluting smelters had to lay off as much as 3.7 million tonnes of capacity at the height of the current crisis as aluminium prices fell well short of production costs, but groups such as UC Rusal, Hydro and Rio Tinto were also not spared the pain of closing down some units. What did then work wonders for Indian smelters?
Equipped as they are with low cost and efficiently run power stations taking care of their smelters’ entire electricity requirements and as the country is endowed with rich bauxite deposits, our production cost of aluminium figures in the lowest quartile among world producers. Nalco has the unique advantage of ownership of huge high quality bauxite deposits at a single site in Orissa’s hills of Panchpatmali. The rich mineral endowment plus unremitting efforts to acquire more deposits both within and outside Orissa will keep Nalco a perennial exporter of alumina.
The Indian aluminium industry’s enthusiasm to grow smelting capacity on an ambitious scale here and abroad — the wanderlust is that of Nalco — was not dimmed in any way by the adverse performance of the metal during the recession. According to Nalco director BL Bagra, the company is working to give shape to three mega projects simultaneously, including a $4-billion 500,000 tonnes smelter along with a captive 1,250 power complex at East Kalimantan in Indonesia.
Nalco is also pursuing a project of similar configuration at Jharsuguda in Orissa. The promised access to 80 million tonnes of bauxite deposits at Gudem and KR Konda in Andhra Pradesh will also lead Nalco to build a 1.4-million-tonne alumina refinery in the state. For any metal group raw material security is of cardinal importance. Nalco will no doubt have enough bauxite to go by for a good number of years. The company’s move to acquire bauxite and coal resources globally is, however, to be seen in the context of its plans to build large new smelters.
Hindalco has also got big things on its plate. If all its projects get commissioned on revised schedule, then Hindalco will see its smelting capacity rising to 1.7 million tonnes from 500,000 tonnes and alumina refining capacity to 6.5 million tonnes from 1.7 million tonnes by 2013. Meanwhile, Novelis acquisition has given Hindalco global leadership in that value added segment where path breaking technologies are in application.
Vedanta has arrived on the Indian aluminium scene much later than Hindalco and Nalco. While it has made up for the lost time by gaining control of Balco and Madras Aluminium, Vedanta is aggressively building new capacity through greenfield and brownfield routes. By 2013, it claims, it will have at least 2.6 million tonne smelting and 5 million tonne alumina refinery capacity. Action of the three groups is vindication that India due to its abundance of bauxite and coal resources is the ideal place to smelt aluminium.
