How Investments Play Into The Story Of An Indian Aluminum Park

A Bahrain-based company, Midal Cables, announced its move to set up an aluminum conductor-and-rod manufacturing unit in the Indian state of Odisha. The total project will bring in about US $53 million in investment.

The more important part of that story is the location of this new unit. Midal is keen on setting up this facility at the aluminum downstream and ancillary products park at Angul in Odisha.

Angul is one of the few aluminum parks in India. It has been developed jointly by the state government’s nodal land acquisition agency — Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha (IDCO) and the Public Sector Unit (PSU) National Aluminum Company (Nalco).

The ancillary and downstream industries identified to come up in the park include caustic soda, petroleum coke, coal tar pitch, aluminum fluoride, aluminum conductors, aluminum extrusions, aluminum castings and slugs, among others.

Midal Cables, among the first of the investing companies off the block, wants about 40 acres of land within the park. The aluminum conductor unit is expected to cater to the domestic as well as the international market. The company intends to use molten aluminum to manufacture its products.

The requirement of Midal Cables is pegged at 60,000 tons per year, and for this the company wants to enter into a 25-year contract with Nalco at a variable pricing mechanism. The company management hopes to get the project off the ground in about 15 months once all the permissions are given.

Thus, the spotlight turns on Angul once again. Midal’s project may face a delay not because of any reasons of its own, but simply because work on the park is not exactly in full swing.

There is a time lag between the milestones set up for the park at the planning stage and the realities on the ground. One of the reasons for this is that same old perennial problem that plagues almost all major projects in India – land.

by Sohrab Darabshaw