India Nalco faces output fall on coal supply shortage

BHUBANESWAR, India, Dec 30 (Reuters) - State-run National Aluminium Co Ltd (NALCO) could see a production loss of about 1,000 tonnes due to coal supply shortage after a machinery failure at its supplier mine, a senior company official said on Wednesday. Nalco, India's third-largest aluminium maker, produced 361,262 tonnes of aluminium in 2008/09, solely out of the aluminium smelter at Angul in Orissa state in eastern India. "The production loss should not be more than 3 to 5 percent of our monthly target," K. S. Sreedhara, executive director of smelter and power, told Reuters. "We still have three months to recover. We will try and compensate." A fire on Tuesday damaged machinery and two conveyor belts causing disruption at Mahanadi Coal Field Ltd's Bharat Mines in Orissa, which supplies coal to Nalco. The state-run firm uses the coal to run its captive power plant that supplies power to its smelter. The Angul smelter normally gets coal supplies of 15,000 to 16,000 tonnes daily from the mines, but on Tuesday received only about 8,000 tonnes. Sreedhara said the coal stock at the Angul plant was thin and would last only for two more days, but efforts were on to overcome the crisis through other local supplies and using alternative means to transport coal from the mines. "The restoration work may take some ...6 to 7 days," Sreedhara said. Nalco shares closed down 0.2 percent at 389.65 rupees on Wednesday, in a Mumbai market that slipped 0.33 percent. (Reporting by Jatindra Dash; Writing by Prashant Mehra; Editing by Malini Menon)