Balco fights time, odds

The 2.5 lakh-tonne expansion plant, as targeted, will go into trial production as early as December. Final commissioning of the plant will take place nine months later, increasing Balco’s annual capacity from one lakh tonne to 3.5 lakh tonnes.

Currently Balco’s only competitors in the aluminum sector are Hindalco — a unit of the Birla Group — and state-run NALCO. Till three years ago, Sterlite Industries — Balco’s new owner — was not even sure if the existing plant ‘shut down after 76-day strike of the Balco unions’ would be revived.

After posting Rs 67-crore net profit last year — despite clearing Rs 120 crore VRS burden — Balco’s next target is to become the Number 1 aluminium producer in India by 2006.

Under the Rs 6,500-crore expansion drawn two years ago, Balco proposes to capitalise on its location in Chhattisgarh, which has the country’s largest bauxite and coal reserves. The company has gone a step ahead and set up an alumina refinery unit at Lanjigarh, Kalahandi district, Orissa. Managing Director T.L. Palani Kumar, who visited the plant last week, said: ‘‘In the past two years, we concentrated on expansion plans and selected the world’s best technologies. Orders for machinery worth Rs 4,000 crore have been placed. Over Rs 2,000 crore been invested on the ground. Things are going as planned and we plan to hit the market next year.’’

For the first time, Balco has selected two Chinese companies — GAMI and SEPCO — for installing machinery at its one-kilometer-long smelter shed.

But the Prime Minister’s declaration that the Centre would sell the remaining 49 per cent of Balco shares has sparked resentment among unions. The Balco Bachao Sangrah Samiti has sent a memorandum to PM in this regard. The workers also staged a demonstration the day the Balco MD visited the plant.

Kumar says the government, as per the disinvestment deal, is legally bound to allot the remaining shares to the Sterlite Industries.