Media reports quoted a top executive of Vedanta Aluminium (VAL) as saying that the company is forced to shut down its one-million-tonne (mn t) alumina refinery in Odisha because of shortage of bauxite.
The company had issued a three-month advance notice in September to close the refinery, as it had no bauxite stock to run the plant beyond the deadline.
Meanwhile, the state steel & mines Minister Rajani Kant Singh has reportedly said that a three-member inter-ministerial group would decide on the supply of whatever raw material resources available with the state government to industries within three months.
Some reports suggest that though stoppage of refinery will be official from the first week of December, the plant had already come to a halt owing to want of bauxite. Before that the refinery was operating at only 25 per cent of its capacity for some time.
VALÂ’s refinery was facing raw material problem since going onstream in August, 2007. The company had entered into a joint venture with Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), which had a 78-mt bauxite deposit at Niyamgiri Hills near Lanjigarh, for the sourcing of ore. But mining could not be taken up due to protests by locals and green groups.
The Union ministry of environment and forest had further dealt a blow to the project by rejecting the Stage-II forest clearance for mining operations on August 24, 2010.
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