New Delhi, Feb 2 (TIWN): With no relief in sight despite coal stocks running critically low and production disruptions looming across the Indian aluminium sector, the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) has approached the Ministry of Coal, urging the immediate resumption of adequate coal rakes for the highly power-intensive Aluminium industry.

In its representation to the Ministry, the AAI has lauded the combined efforts by the Ministry of Coal and Coal India Limited in reviving domestic coal production, which has helped ease the coal supply crisis for the Power Sector. The steps undertaken by the Ministry increased the overall daily rakes dispatched from 242 rakes/day in September 2021 to 289 rakes/day in December 2021. This has drastically strengthened the coal stocks of the Power Sector to around 10 days, a marked improvement from a mere 2-3 days in the months of September-October last year.

However, this has come at enormous cost to the Captive Power Plants (CPP)-based industry and the worst impacted is the Indian aluminium industry, which continues to see depleting coal stocks of only 3-4 days, abysmally low compared to the prescribed level of 15 days for the sector. Struggling to cope with this prolonged crisis since the second quarter of this fiscal year, the AAI has now sought the Ministry's support to ensure adequate supplies to the CPPs by earmarking at least 25-30 coal rakes per day to ensure viable industry operations.

The need for the CPPs is especially urgent, given that Aluminium production is a continuous process that requires huge volumes of uninterrupted quality power supply. This quantum can only be met only through the in-house CPPs set up by all the aluminium smelters plants to meet this specific requirement. Accordingly, the industry has established Captive Power Plants of 9,400 MW capacity (comprising 34 per cent of the cumulative thermal CPPs capacity domestically) to supply continuous power for Aluminium operations.