A few years earlier, central government-owned National Aluminium Company (Nalco) saw profits and market capitalisation falling and two chairmen in succession coming under the lens of investigation agencies. In that backdrop, Ansuman Das was made chairman and managing director of the Odisha-based company in August 2012. During his last day in office on Wednesday, he recounts to Dillip Satapathy & Kunal Bose the steps taken to steady the company and change its image. Edited excerpts:

You faced a tricky situation with the Nalco bauxite mine lease nearing its end on your assuming the chairman's office. How did you save the situation?

Our strength is in ownership of high-quality bauxite deposits. I ensured that ahead of the lease expiry, the mines operated at optimum capacity. We quickly built two months of stocks. The refinery operation remained normal. Our intense interaction with government agencies resulted in getting a temporary permit to operate the mine and then the lease was renewed.

Your decision to keep idle almost a third of smelting capacity was path-breaking. It must have required a lot of convincing the government and workers.

It was a kind of double whammy. Aluminium prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) were staying stubbornly low, while the cost of energy rose because of our using expensive imported coal to supplement the coal linkage. So, I thought the sensible thing would be to keep that much capacity idle. I asked my directors to hold open house meetings with smelter employees, to convince them that the production discipline would be in the long-term interest of Nalco. They graciously accepted the loss of incentive money, and the mines ministry saw the logic. Our profits improved as a result of our decommissioning a large number of smelting pots.

LME prices remain around $1,820 a tonne. The premium paid on ready delivery has also slipped considerably. What is your take on the market?

I think in the near term, aluminium will move between $1,800 and $1,850 a tonne. Worryingly, as global supply of the metal has risen, thanks to China stepping up export, the premium is down to nearly $100 a tonne for immediate delivery. I hope these rates will improve. The problem is, with China growing at the slowest pace since 1990, it has the compulsion to export large quantities of aluminium and steel.

The Utkal E-coal block was allotted to Nalco for captive use but cancelled with other allotments by a Supreme Court order. A big disappointment for you.

This 67.49 million tonne (mt) block was given to feed our two new power plants of 120 Mw each. Our claim to this and an adjacent block rests on the provision in the Mines & Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act for reservation of resources for the public sector. More, we have done a lot of development work there to make it ready for mining. My point is, either you give me coal deposits of 200 mt or give me coal linkages for 6.6 mt against our present one for 4.8 mt. Power and fuel are 32 per cent of our production cost. We need cheap coal for viable operation.

Any progress in the intermittently discussed second smelter?

We use as much as 15,000 kwh to make a tonne of aluminium. The challenge is to do the smelting at a place where cheap energy - coal or gas - is available. We are told by consultants that two preferred destinations for building a 500,000 tonne smelter will be Indonesia, where you have coal in plenty, and Oman, where gas comes as cheap energy feedstock. Because of our large and high-quality bauxite deposits, India's strength is in making alumina, the intermediate material for aluminium. We should make alumina here and get it smelted abroad. Instead of our staying a net exporter of aluminium, where a lot of energy is packed, let that electricity be used here in more purposeful ways.

India's per capita aluminium use 1.4 kg, against the world average of about seven kg. What are areas here where more aluminium will be used?

Prime Minister Modi's Make in India programme succeeding will give a boost to demand. While electricity will continue to have nearly 50 per cent of total Indian aluminium use, I believe construction, transportation and packaging hold much promise for the white metal. As India is rapidly building capacity in aviation, the aluminium industry should get ready to supply alloys with lithium.

Have you left any job unfinished?

I wish I could start implementing the 1-mt expansion of the alumina refinery at Damanjodi. Also, the 270,000-tonne caustic soda project at Dahej in Gujarat. I hoped I could secure the Odisha government recommendation for a mining lease of the Pottangi bauxite deposit (in Koraput district). What gives me much happiness is that I could put Nalco on the road to becoming a producer of 500 Mw of renewable energy in the next few years. It already has 100 Mw of wind power capacity and another 100 Mw is to be added this year. We will also be harnessing solar energy, starting with 20 Mw shortly.