Hindalco Industries Ltd, India’s biggest aluminium producer, hopes to set up a high-end alloy plate manufacturing unit for the country’s defence sector, managing director Satish Pai said in an interview.
The project would need an overall investment of Rs20 billion and Hindalco is in talks with the government to evaluate if it can start it as a public-private partnership (PPP), Pai said.
The company’s factory in Aurangabad already makes aluminium alloy billets and slabs for use in the aerospace, sporting goods and surface transport industries, and Hindalco is ideally suited for such a project due to its downstream capacity of casting alloy, Pai said.
It could take about two years to put up such a unit, he added.
The company estimates that India will need about 5,000 tonnes of high-end alloy plates over the next five years, and in the absence of strong domestic manufacturing, these would have to be imported.
Hindalco, which has a target of doubling its downstream aluminium capacity in five years, is facing stiff competition from cheaper Chinese imports.
Aluminium is used in everything from packaging, automobiles, aircraft, to defence, construction and other industrial products.
Defence is one of the growth areas that Hindalco has identified, where a number of domestic firms are looking to start manufacturing in India.
It is also targeting sectors such as urban transport, packaging, building and construction, and automobiles to grow domestic demand.
More than half of India’s aluminium demand is currently met through imports.
Hindalco expects domestic aluminium demand to rise 7 per cent in the current fiscal on the back of the government’s push on infrastructure development and the likelihood of higher power sector orders.
