ATHENS--Vedanta Resources' (VED.LN) new alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in India's Orissa state is expected to be commissioned by the end of the month, Prasanna Panda, vice president mining at Vedanta Alumina Ltd. said Wednesday.
The new greenfield refinery will have a capacity of 1.4 million metric tons.
"We're in the pre-commissioning stage right now and we're expecting to startup sometime this month, most likely at the end of March," he said. "We have around 500,000 tons of bauxite on site already and we don't foresee any problems with ramp-up," he added.
Vedanta signed the agreement with Orissa state to develop an alumina refinery in bauxite-rich Lanjigarh in 2004. Bauxite will be sourced from the adjacent 4.2 million-tons-a-year mine at Lanjigarh.
And looking ahead, Panda told Dow Jones Newswires that the layout of the new refinery has taken into account the possibility of future expansions. "There's space on site for expansions, although we haven't declared a plan to do this yet," he noted, adding that alumina market conditions would dictate any such decisions.
Panda was speaking on the sidelines of Metal Bulletin's 13th bauxite and alumina conference in Athens.
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