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Nalco to complete alumina expansion by end June

State-run National Aluminium Company plans to complete the expansion of its alumina plant to a production rate of 1.58 million tonnes a year by the end of this month, its chairman said on Thursday.

"It will take another three months for production to stabilise," P Parvathisem said by telephone from Bhubaneshwar.

Nalco, India's second largest aluminium maker and located in the mineral-rich town of Damanjodi in Orissa, has a current alumina output capacity of 800,000 tonnes per annum.

Parvathisem said the firm has already doubled bauxite mining capacity to 4.8 million tonnes a year.

The company plans to expand the annual production capacity of its aluminium smelter at Angul in Orissa to 345,000 tonnes from 230,000 tonnes by May 2002.

"Expansion of the smelter is on schedule," he said.

Nalco is also implementing several projects to produce value-added products such as special grade alumina and zeolite.

"These are small projects and would be completed soon," he said.

The chairman said there was no fresh proposal at present to expand production capacities further.

Nalco produced 230,516 tonnes of aluminium in 2000-01 (April-March) compared with 212,633 tonnes a year earlier. Alumina output touched 931,000 tonnes from 906,000.

The company exported a record 118,869 tonnes of aluminium in 2000/01, up from the previous best of 95,185 tonnes in 1999-2000.

The government plans to offload some of its equity in Nalco during the current year.

The privatisation proposal includes the offer of sale up to 30 per cent equity to retail as well as institutional investors and a global depositary receipt issue of 15 per cent, a government report has said.

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