KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - Indian State-run integrated aluminium producer National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco) has appealed to the Supreme Court seeking to prevent rival Vedanta Limited from participating in tenders for the sale of surplus alumina.

Nalco has maintained that it would not register Vedanta as a bidder as its surplus alumina was only for overseas buyers against the export tender floated by the company.

Vedanta for its part has claimed that since its plant at Lanjigarh, in the eastern state of Odisha, was designated as being located in a special economic zone (SEZ), it was eligible to bid against an export tender. Countering this, Nalco stated that if Vedanta was to bid against the tender, it should do so through one of its associated London-based companies and not directly.

Nalco is one of the world’s lowest-cost producers of alumina. It produced 2.153-million tonnes of alumina hydrate during fiscal 2018/19 and 0.44-million tonnes of metal and exports its surplus alumina production to overseas buyers.

Opposing Nalco in preventing its bid to buy the latter’s surplus alumina, Vedanta moved the Odisha High Court to legally challenge the State-run producer's stand on the sale.

The Odisha High Court in a judgment last month stated, “Because on one hand it refuses Vedanta to participate in the tender and on the other hand Nalco has allowed it to apply through a sister concern based in London and spend huge foreign exchange to transport it to London and back to its plant in the SEZ, it does find any favour with commercial sense”.

Vedanta has submitted to the High Court that Nalco's decision has adversely affected the public interest of fetching maximum revenue from the sale of alumina produced from its bauxite which was readily available to it from its own mining on account of it being a government undertaking.

Vedanta’s Lanjigarh plant, with a capacity of 1.6-million tonnes of metal production, does not have any captive bauxite mine.

Nalco on Thursday decided to challenge the High Court verdict in favour of Vedanta before the apex court.