Angul, May, 8: The National Aluminium Company (Nalco) has so far closed 80 pots in its smelter plant and is going to shut down one 120 MW unit in its captive power plant here due to the severe coal crisis.
The company has decided to shut down 200 aluminium producing pots within a week due to of lack of required coal needed to run its power plant, which supplies uninterrupted power to the smelter plant to produce aluminium.
Nalco sources said that since the beginning of the current financial year, it had been drawing 5,000 tonne less coal from Mahanadi Coalfield Limited (MCL) a day. It has now a record-low stock of below one lakh tonne.
It is estimated that the total aluminium output in the plant, which remains at an average of 1,100 tonne, will come down to 850 tonne after 200 pots are shut down. Though the Nalco smelter plant has 960 pots, it has been running only 823 pots because of lack of adequate coal. Now it is closing down 200 more pots because of the same reason.
This is the first time that the company is closing down such a large number of pots. “We have started closing pots from May 6. The closure process will be completed by May 12. After this, there will be 250 tonne less metal production from the plant,” said Nalco executive director P.R. Chaudhury.
Nalco’s decision to shut down these pots came after it decided to cut down power generation from its captive power plant by 200 MW. The captive power plant usually generates 800 MW daily, but due to the ongoing coal crisis it will produce 600 MW only by shutting down more units, according to an official source.
“The coal stock is only for five days .We have been getting 8,000 to 9,000 tonne coal from MCL as against the requirement of 13,000 tonne,” said Chaudhury.
“We have taken up the matter with the MCL authorities who have assured us that they will fully cooperate. We hope to overcome the situation soon as soon as we get at least 16,000 tonne coal per day,” Chaudhury added.
The MCL director A K.Singh said: “The linked Bharatpur mine at Talcher , which supplies coal to Nalco through the merry-go-round system has been closed due to want of forest clearance. We have asked Nalco to lift coal from other mines by road and are also trying to step up the supply.”
