New Delhi, Jan. 20: State-run National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) plans to invest over Rs 22,000 crore to build mining and manufacturing facilities in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

“Nalco has proposed to establish mines and a refinery project in Visakhapatnam and an aluminium smelter plant and a coal-based captive power unit at Brajarajnagar in Jharsuguda district of Orissa as part of its expansion,” the ministry of mines said in a statement.

Nalco, however, did not give any time frame for the projects.

The 5-lakh-tonne-per-annum aluminium smelter in Jharsuguda will be built in two phases along with a 1,260MW captive power plant at an estimated investment of Rs 16,345 crore.

The proposed alumina plant in Visakhapatnam with an annual capacity of 1.4 million tonnes will involve an investment of about Rs 5,700 crore. The company has recently been given bauxite mines in Andhra Pradesh with a capacity of 4.2 million tonnes per year. Nalco has allotted Rs 2 crore each in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa for pre-project activities, of which Rs 57 lakh have been released. Nalco has a 4.35-million-tonne aluminium unit at Angul in Orissa.

Diamond search

NMDC, the country’s largest iron ore miner, and De Beers have found traces of diamond deposits in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Surveys are also under way in these states to detect gold deposits, the government said in a release. Explorations in the three states had found 41 kiberlite and 13 lamproite pipes, indicating possible diamond deposits underneath.

Kimberlite and lamproite are solidified volcanic magma that work as elevators to bring diamonds to the earth’s surface along with other minerals.