According to the official, the aluminium major which had already transferred almost 40 odd pots earlier proposes to take another chunk to its Hirakud plant soon.

Smelting costs had become unviable and the company had to bear up with increasing costs of Rs 4 per unit and a break-even was possible at Rs 2.30 or at most Rs 2.50 per unit. The transfer of pots to Hirakud could leverage on the low cost of power at this unit, said the official. The company has predicted alower profitability from its Alupuram smelter in Kerala following a nearly 25 per cent increase in power tariff announced recently. However, in spite of the exogenous problems, Indal has taken concerted moves towards effective metal sourcing and inventory management over the last one year.

With demand conditions for the sheet and foil markets witnessing signs of improvement of late, the company hopes to encash on production of sheets for the high value niche segment according to the official. This would not mean moving away from low value products but it would be pertinent to keep this segment as a low priority area, the official added.

The modernisation at the company's Belur and Taloja plants will help in equipment upgrades. Moreover, it is estimated that with the support of information technology, processes of product development and delivery systems would be easier for the company.

The aluminium major reaped good profits at Rs 76.36 crore for 1998-99 (Rs 71.37 crore) in spite of an increased taxcomponent (Rs 13.5 crore). This was possible by gearing initiatives towards saving of about Rs 25 crore. Moreover, a 24 per cent growth in export of value-added special alumina chemicals had contributed to the company's profitability. In its bid to undertake initiatives for the current year, the aluminium major is going in for brownfield expansions at Muri in Bihar and Belgaum in Karnataka.At Belgaum, the company plans to increase from 290,000 tpa to 3,65,000 tpa and next to 5,10,000 tonnes. Indal also plans to double its capacity at Hirakud in Orissa from 30kt to 60kt.

As far as the company's business operations from upstream business was concerned, the value added by the chemicals business was almost 42 per cent of the total sales revenue of the company in 1998-99.

In fact, the chemicals business was successful in lowering the cost of production through global procurement of raw materials such as caustic and oil. Domestic sales in the chemicals business grew by 32 per cent despite low demand innon-metallurgical end-use segments such as refractories and cement.