New Delhi [India]Jan 19 (ANI): Emphasizing on the advantage of aluminum over other metals, Vedanta Aluminium’s CEO Rahul Sharma told ANI on Thursday that every kg of aluminum used in a car reduces the overall weight by one kg.
This leads to an increase in driving range, which means that a 100kg savings on any electric vehicle can lead to an additional 10-15 per cent increase in range, which will be critical for higher EV adoption among consumers, he added.
As countries transition to clean technologies at a rapid pace to meet the urgent need for urgent climate action and sustainable lifestyles, the CEO said the transition to a net zero economy will be metal-intensive, and aluminum is recognized as one of the critical metals. Identified as such. Clean Energy Solutions will assist in this transformation by meeting the emerging demand for green technologies and sustainable systems.
“The metal’s high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, exceptional design flexibility and infinite recyclability, coupled with the fact that bauxite (aluminum ore) mining is sustainable and environmentally friendly, testify to its eco-friendliness and sustainability.” Yes,” Sharma said.
The lighter weight enables manufacturers to build machines, equipment and vehicles that are fuel and energy efficient, thereby reducing the carbon burden on the environment.
Vedanta Aluminum plans to commission the entire installed capacity at its aluminum smelters at Jharsuguda in Odisha and Balko (Korba) in Chhattisgarh within 4-5 years, India’s largest metal producer told ANI on Thursday.
This will enable the company to add new product lines and further diversify its product mix to meet the growing demand in strategic sectors such as defence, aviation, space exploration, power, construction and infrastructure, said Rahul Sharma, CEO, Vedanta Aluminium. Will bring for sunrise sectors such as high-tech manufacturing, electric mobility, renewable energy, and more.
The company’s strategic focus will be on significant expansion of the restora and value-added product portfolio.
“To meet the demand from our smelters, we are increasing the production capacity of our alumina refinery unit. Along with this, we are also investing in digital transformation of our plants and processes, leveraging green technologies, diversifying our energy mix to include renewable energy, and working towards our vision of net zero carbon operations,” said Rahul Sharma.
According to the CEO, Vedanta Aluminum became the first manufacturer in India to launch Green Aluminium, branded Restora, to meet the growing global demand for low-carbon aluminium.
Aluminum is a very eco-friendly metal. Recycling this material saves 95 percent of the energy needed to produce aluminum from raw materials. This means that it plays an important role in human ecology.
With Restora, Vedanta joins the select list of companies around the world producing green aluminium. Hence, while the pandemic and associated lockdown brought its own challenges, strategic and planned interventions have helped them survive and thrive through the disruptions.
More importantly, the company recently announced plans for Vedanta Aluminum Park, which will come up near Vedanta’s mega aluminum smelter in Jharsuguda.
CEO told ANI that it will be a world class industrial facility where aluminum based companies in extrusion, electrical, casting, auto ancillary, packaging, powder can set up their plants to make high quality hot/liquid aluminum on demand. Manufacturing top class aluminum products.
The park is strategically located, well connected and offers a host of advantages to industries ranging from raw material to waste processing to research and value added services like Center of Excellence (COE).
The project also comes with significant sustainability benefits, such as considerable energy and fuel savings by eliminating the need for remelting and cross-country logistics. “With quality, excellence and sustainability, the park will give a boost to India’s aluminum-based industries, placing the country firmly on the global map as the aluminum hub of the world,” Sharma said.
In addition, the company has a few brownfield projects at various stages of implementation. These include capacity expansion of its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh from 2 to 5 MTPA and expansion of its aluminum smelter at BALCO to 1 MTPA as well as new value-added products at our smelters, said Rahul Sharma.
Discussing the lines of challenges, CEO Sharma told ANI that the domestic aluminum industry is grappling with headwinds in the form of rising raw material costs, an inverted duty structure and rising taxes.
He said that the current duty on key inputs like calcined pet coke and caustic soda lye is prohibitively high at 7.5-10 per cent and should be adequately rationalized to ensure cost-competitiveness of domestic aluminum production.
In contrast, the CEO said that globally, governments provided duty relief and incentives to their aluminum industries to promote domestic value addition and generate employment.
This has made it difficult for Indian aluminum producers to compete in the global market, he added. The muted demand due to the recent geo-political challenges and the impact of the pandemic has also impacted LME levels, the CEO told ANI.
He added that further, due to the absence of mandatory quality standards in India and tougher quality checks in the EU, US and China, India has become a destination for dumping of foreign aluminium, especially in the form of substandard scrap.
With nearly 40 per cent of the domestic market lost to foreign scrap, he said it is also hurting the overall development of the Indian recycling system. The situation has been encouraged by the low import duty on scrap at present at 2.5 per cent.
The CEO said stricter quality standards and a duty of at least 10 per cent were necessary to make India a dumping ground for substandard foreign junk.
On the lines of aluminum’s advantage over other metals, CEO Rahul Sharma said that corrosion resistance helps aluminum products last longer, thereby reducing the need for repair and maintenance activities in various forms. Perpetual recyclability ensures that aluminum products can be re-melted and made into other products over and over again, thus saving significant energy and emissions.
“These properties have made aluminum the largest and fastest growing non-ferrous metal industry in the world today. No wonder the industry has shown maximum promise among all metals, growing nearly 20-fold over the last sixty years.” (compared to 6-7 times for other metals),” he said. (ANI)
This report has been auto generated from ANI News Service. ThePrint is not responsible for its content.