India's production of primary aluminium totalled 955,830t in the Apr 06-Jan 07 period (the first 10 months of the current financial year), according to figures from the country's Ministry of Mines.
That represented super-fast year-on-year growth of 23.8%, extending a trend that has been evident since the start of the financial year in April.
However, as the chart below shows, annualised production is starting to level out and the growth rate should start losing some of its momentum in the coming months.
The main reason for that is the fact that Balco has now completed the expansion of its Korba smelter from 100,000tpy to 345,000tpy. The company, which is jointly owned by the Indian government and Vedanta Resources, saw production in January ease to 29,635t from 30,415t in December.
Expressed in annualised terms the Korba smelter ran at an equivalent 348,928t in January, down from 358,112t in December.
That means that national production growth in the next period will come just from Hindalco's expansion of its Hirakud smelter. The first phase expansion from 65,000tpy to 100,000tpy was completed at the end of last year and the second phase expansion to 147,000tpy is only due to be completed in the second half of this calendar year.
Hindalco group production—from both Hirakud and the Renukoot smelter—edged up to 38,755t (456,309t annualised) in January from 38,480t (453,071t annualised) in December. The company's production growth has picked up from under 2% to 4% in the last couple of reporting months.
The country's other two producers—state-owned Nalco and Vedanta-owned Malco—have been operating at or just above nameplate capacity for some time. Nalco produced 30,485t in January, equivalent to an annualised 358,936t. The company is planning a capacity hike from the current 345,000tpy to 460,000tpy but completion is still some way out in the future—the latest target we've seen is 2008.
Malco produced 3,123t in January, equivalent to an annualised 36,771t, little changed month-on-month.
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