Will Try to Keep Loss-Making Lanjigarh Unit Running: Vedanta

Bhubaneswar: Pinning its hope on the Odisha government for raw material linkage, Vedanta Group on Tuesday said it will try its best to keep the refinery at Lanjigarh running despite sustaining huge losses.

"We will try our best not to shut down the plant as we are hopeful that the state government has been doing something to meet our requirement of raw material to run the refinery," Vedanta (aluminium) CEO Abhijit Pati said after attending a meeting chaired by chief secretary G C Pati here.

Abhijit Pati said the refinery requires at least three lakh metric tonnes of bauxite ore per annum.

At present, the production capacity of the refinery has fallen by about 50 per cent due to non-availability of raw material, he said.

The Vedanta Group, which has set up a 1 MTPA refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha's Kalahandi district, had earlier initiated process for gradual closure of the plant due to shortage of raw material.

Mr Pati said the Lanjgarh refinery was facing a daily loss of about Rs 3 crore.

"Despite huge revenue loss, the company will try to keep the refinery running as Vedanta Chief Anil Agarwal says aluminium is the future," Mr Pati pointed out.