BALCO’s significant contribution supporting India in the journey of becoming self-reliant

India’s iconic Aluminium producer, Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO) apart from setting new benchmarks in the field of production, productivity, research and development, quality and others have also served the society with optimism through its various flagship projects.

The momentous contributions of BALCO through its 56 years long developmental journey has led to the development of state and country at large, thus, supporting India in its journey of becoming ‘self-reliant’.

Balco’s march towards the contribution of nation development continued with the business operations by adhering to COVID safety protocols during the testing times of the pandemic. Though the organization was also affected by the COVID induced worldwide economic disruptions but the resilience of the aluminium producer’s employees and its business partners drove the production process. It can be asserted that India is gradually stirring up the potential of its minerals and metals industry, which ensured that the wheels of the economy kept running, despite the ravages of the pandemic.

The data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) revealed that India’s mining GDP increased from INR 739.90 billion in Q4 2020 to INR 913.03 billion in Q1 2021.

Abhijit Pati, the CEO and Director of BALCO, while talking about the importance of the aluminium industry and BALCO’s contribution said, “Aluminium is a metal of significant strategic importance to India, critical to almost all sectors of significance to modern life and essential to building a sustainable tomorrow. By virtue of its unusual properties like high strength-to-weight ratio, exceptional design flexibility, superior thermal & electrical properties, 100% recyclability over and over again, Aluminium’s demand in space exploration, aviation, electric vehicles, renewable energy production, electricity transmission, construction, consumer goods, and more, is only slated to increase.”

“BALCO is playing a crucial role in introducing Aluminium as a potential alternative to other metals in various sectors such as in the power transmission industry. BALCO has been an early adopter of smart technologies for heightened operational efficiencies, which further bolsters the culture of energy optimization, safety, and productivity that we have meticulously fostered across the organization. Our primary focus is delivering the value of the highest standard to our stakeholders. We are constantly motivated towards improving our costs and our quality of production in each of our businesses through a culture of best practice benchmarking.”

India ranks among the top positions in the global aluminium industry with the second-largest aluminium production capacity of about 4 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of which around 55% is produced by Vedanta group constituting 15% production by BALCO.

Vedanta Group and BALCO have always worked towards strengthening research and development following market needs. The highly advanced R&D capability has empowered the production of sophisticated alloys such as ‘Primary Foundry Alloy’ (PFA) and ‘Cylinder-Head Alloy’ for the automotive industry and AlSi3 for the steel industry for the very first time in India. Before Vedanta produced them indigenously, these alloys were being entirely imported into India. Vedanta also recently rolled-out ‘High-Speed Billets’, a special billet variant with advanced metallurgical properties to significantly boost the productivity of extruders.  

BALCO is also one of the major producers of wire rods in the country and also produces primary aluminium ingots that are re-melted to produce several end products covering the entire spectrum of aluminium applications using the state of the art technology. It is also equipped to deliver high quality rolled products in segments with application in automobiles, insulations, bus bars, power projects, electrical, packaging etc.

The global aluminium consumption has been driven majorly by India and China having a growth rate of approximately 10% till pre-COVID times. The previous decade has witnessed India’s consumption almost double from 2.2 million tonnes in FY-11 to about 4 million tonnes in FY-19. The country’s aluminium demand is estimated to double again by the year 2025 with the current resilient GDP growth rate driven by increasing urbanization and push for boosting domestic infrastructure, automotive, aviation, defence and power sectors. 

The state in central India, Chhattisgarh is already in an advantageous position regarding industrial development, while necessitate is to undertake requisite policy measures to support the downstream aluminium industries that will further generate numerous employment opportunities. Furthermore, the supply of large scale processed aluminium from Chhattisgarh to neighbouring states and worldwide will only lead to an escalation in the revenue figures.