BHUBANESWAR: Vedanta Aluminium on Thursday will inform Odisha government its decision to lay off employees at its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh with no hope of an immediate revival of the plant, the company's chief operating officer Mukesh Kumar told ET.
VAL, a unit of London-listed Vedanta Resources, was forced to close down its refinery with a million tonne a year capacity two weeks ago due to non-availability of bauxite, the key raw material used to produce alumina.
The Act requires any plant employing more than 100 workmen to take prior permission from the state government for lay-off, retrenchment and closure. VAL has about 550 employees on its payroll.
In the past three months, about 70-75 employees, including engineers and executives, have already left the refinery, according to Kumar. The Lanjigarh plant had been facing bauxite shortages since its commissioning in August 2007 as the state government could not fulfill its commitment of supplying bauxite from the nearby Niyamgiri hills through state-run Odisha Mining Corporation, which held the lease due to regulatory and legal issues.
The refinery requires 10,000 tonnes of bauxite a day to operate at full capacity and the VAL had been lifting bauxite from the open market, which also has dried down. Odisha has a rich deposit of bauxite, pegged at 1,849 million tones, of all categories.
Ironically, during 2003-09, only 28.8 million tonnes of bauxite ore has been produced mostly from Panchpatmali mines of the maharatna National Aluminium Company. Some 7,000 people, mostly locals, would be seriously affected due to the retrenchment, a company top official said. VAL had announced to shut down the refinery on December 5. The Lanjigarh refinery has already incurred financial.
Courtsey: Economic Times
VAL, a unit of London-listed Vedanta Resources, was forced to close down its refinery with a million tonne a year capacity two weeks ago due to non-availability of bauxite, the key raw material used to produce alumina.
The Act requires any plant employing more than 100 workmen to take prior permission from the state government for lay-off, retrenchment and closure. VAL has about 550 employees on its payroll.
In the past three months, about 70-75 employees, including engineers and executives, have already left the refinery, according to Kumar. The Lanjigarh plant had been facing bauxite shortages since its commissioning in August 2007 as the state government could not fulfill its commitment of supplying bauxite from the nearby Niyamgiri hills through state-run Odisha Mining Corporation, which held the lease due to regulatory and legal issues.
The refinery requires 10,000 tonnes of bauxite a day to operate at full capacity and the VAL had been lifting bauxite from the open market, which also has dried down. Odisha has a rich deposit of bauxite, pegged at 1,849 million tones, of all categories.
Ironically, during 2003-09, only 28.8 million tonnes of bauxite ore has been produced mostly from Panchpatmali mines of the maharatna National Aluminium Company. Some 7,000 people, mostly locals, would be seriously affected due to the retrenchment, a company top official said. VAL had announced to shut down the refinery on December 5. The Lanjigarh refinery has already incurred financial.
Courtsey: Economic Times
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