Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) resumed operations on Monday at its
alumina refinery in Odisha's Kalahandi district after remaining shut for 10 days due to raw material shortage.
Last month, the company had informed the state government that the operations at the alumina refinery would be halted by December 5. However, due to non-availability of bauxite, it had closed down the plant ahead of schedule on October 12.
"The refinery has been
re-started at a reduced capacity of 60 per cent after we managed to arrange about 35,000 tonne of bauxite from Chhattisgarh and about 90,000 tonne from Gujarat," VAL President Mukesh Kumar told
IANS.
The one-million tonne per annum alumina capacity refinery at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district has been operating at reduced capacity since its commissioning in August 2007.
Set up with an investment of $800 million, VAL requires 300,000 tonne of bauxite per month to run the refinery at full capacity.
Vedanta wanted to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri Hills near the refinery, but the approval was mired in litigations and protests by locals.
It has also applied for several other bauxite reserves in the state, but none of them have been materialised so far.
Kumar said the company might shut down the refinery temporarily again if it did not manage to get more raw material for the plant.
VAL, which is an associate company of the
London-listed Vedanta Resources, has been running the plant by buying
bauxite from different states.
With inputs from IANS 
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