ET reported that Japan's Nikkei MC Aluminium made an entry into India's INR 7,500 crore aluminium alloy market in JV with domestic major Century Metal Recycling.

Mr Shuzou Hammamura president of NMA said that "We will form JV for setting up a plant for manufacturing aluminium alloy used in automotive sector, at Bawal in Haryana with INR 50 crore investments.

A 55:45 JV between Nippon Light Metal Company and Mitsubishi Corporation, NMA is the second largest aluminium alloy maker of Japan. It had clocked USD 600 million turn over last year. NMA has 8 plants including three outside Japan with a total capacity of 0.24 million tonnes a year.

Aluminium alloys, made adding zinc, silicon and manganese among others with the mother metal is being increasingly used in the automotive space to reduce car body weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Mr Hammamura said that work on the proposed Haryana plant would start soon. It would go on stream by the end of the current year. The facility with 42,000 tonnes a year capacity would cater to the automobile companies in the vicinity.

He said that Bawal is in the neighborhood of the Manesar Gurgaon belt which has a large concentration of automotive firms including Maruti and Honda. Nothing has been decided yet but it might look at putting up plants in other parts of India. CMR will hold 74% in the JV and the rest will be with Nikkei.

CMR which claims to be the No 1 firm in India in the aluminium alloy making space has 4 plants and had clocked INR 1,000 crore revenue last year. The NMA and CMR JV would import aluminium scrap from overseas to use as raw material for making alloys.

Mr GS Agarwala chairman of CMR said that every year India consumes around 0.5 million tonnes of aluminium alloy, valued at INR 7,500 crore and the market has been growing by 15% to 20% each year.

Source - Economic Times

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