ET reported that with the 5 million tonne Greenfield Lanjigarh aluminum refinery plant expansion on hold, the Anil Agarwal led Vedanta Aluminum has decided to focus on completing its aluminum smelter plant at Jharsuguda in Orissa to achieve its targeted capacity of 1.75 million tonnes.

Mr Mukesh Kumar president & CEO of VAL said that "The work is on, on a war footing, at the proposed project site at our Jharsuguda plant and we will achieve 1.75 million tonnes capacity by the end of the next financial year."

The company has so far invested around INR 35,000 crore in its Jharsuguda project and around INR 10,000 crore at the Lanjigarh plant and plans to invest the balance of INR 15,000 crore by 2013 to complete its planned expansion. VAL plans to up its smelting capacity at Jharsuguda plant to 1.75 million tonne from the present 0.5 million tonne by 2013.

Mr Kumar said that the Phase I of our 0.5 million tonne per annum smelter and 1 million tonne per annum alumina refinery has already been completed and work on the Phase II is on, except the alumina refinery which is under hold as per the Union Environmental Ministry directives.

He said that the company has set up a Greenfield aluminum refinery plant with a capacity of 1 million tonne at Lanjigarh and plans to ramp up it to 5 million tonne. We are awaiting the environment ministry's clearance to ramp up capacity at Lanjigarh plant in Kalahandi district. The expansion of the refinery plant ran into rough weather after the Union Environmental Ministry refused to give clearance on October 21st 2010.

(Sourced from Economic Times)