BALCO to have world's single largest aluminium plant

Vedanta Resources plc, a London-based mining and metal major, will set up a 650,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) smelter plant in its Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (BALCO) facility located in Korba district of Chhattisgarh, an official said Tuesday. The company will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government Wednesday to set up another smelter plant in the BALCO complex in Korba, about 200 km from here, the official said. On completion of the project, the production output of BALCO will go up from 135,000 tpa to 1,000,000 tpa. As of now, no company in the world produces 1 million tpa aluminium from a single location. In 2001, Vedanta Resources plc took over the management control of BALCO, formerly owned 100 percent by the government of India, after the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government divested 51 percent equity and management control in favour of the then Sterlite Industries (I) Limited (now Vedanta Resources). The company went for a major expansion drive and recently increased the total aluminium output from 135,000 tpa to 350,000 tpa in the existing plant. The new smelter plant, to be set up at an estimated cost of Rs.80 billion, is also part of the same drive.