MUMBAI, Aug 6: Hindalco Industries, the country's largest private sector aluminium company, has recorded a 26 per cent increase in sales for the first four months of the current fiscal when compared to the same period last year.Announcing this at the annual general meeting here today, AV Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said production of primary aluminium too had increased 21 per cent over the same period of last year.The spurt in income has been helped by a steady rise in international prices of aluminium in the current fiscal. With analysts projecting a higher average international price for the remainder of the year, performance is expected to be better in 1997-98.The AV Birla group company has signed a technology transfer agreement with Stahlschmidt & Maiworm of Germany for manufacturing low pressure die cast aluminium alloy wheels."This signifies the company's drive for increased value-addition through forward integration," Birla said. The agreement was signed on June 27 by the two companies.Birla did not see a significant increase in smelter capacity in the south-east Asian region.Demand for aluminium has been projected to grow at around three per cent in the region, which will exceed planned capacity increases.The company is planning to set up a Rs 8,000-crore greenfield smelter in Orissa and has appointed international consultants to carry out a feasibility study.Hindalco also plans to increase the installed capacity of its smelter at Renukoot from 210,000 tonne to 242,000 tonne by the year end. In the last fiscal, however, Hindalco produced 167,000 tonne compared to 173,000 tonne in the previous year.
