Aluminium Industry – Overview

Aluminium is the 3rd most available element in earth by mass. India’s hunt for extracting aluminium from its ore started in 1808 but took more than 4 decades to bring it to production.

India stands at the eighth position in the list of Aluminium producers in the world. Because of the growing demand from the construction, electrical, automobiles and packaging industry, the production of Aluminium is also catching up. With the per capita consumption of aluminium less than 1 kg compared to about 3 kgs in China and 30 kgs in the USA there lies untapped potential. The fact that almost 44% of the domestic aluminium is consumed by the electrical sector and there are only about 300 applications for the metal in India leaves a lot of room for the domestic sector to grow. Just to put things in perspective, aluminium usage on the global front is tilted towards transportation and packaging sectors and there are an estimated 3,000 applications for the metal in developed economies.

India has nearly 10% of the world’s bauxite reserves and a growing aluminium sector that leverages this reserves augurs well. Demand in the domestic market is expected to grow by 8-10; India is expected to have an installed aluminium capacity of 1.7 to 2 million tons per annum by 2020.