By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, September 23, 2017: Faced with a subdued global metal market and a frail bottomline, aluminium major National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) on Saturday announced plans to diversify into areas like green power, caustic soda and merchant mining.

NALCO chairman and managing director Tapan Kumar Chand said, the company is framing a New Business Model (NBM) and a new corporate plan to withstand market onslaughts and keep it afloat with profitability given the “tough going” in the market.

The plan includes diversification into green power, independent power plant (IPP), caustic soda, rare metal like titanium, recovery of iron from red mud waste and merchant mining that are immune to downturns in the metal market, he said.

“This NBM will not only give a new dimension to the company’s growth plans but also redefine business sustainability,” Chand said at the company’s annual general meeting here.

With sluggishness in the metal market across the globe, fluctuating prices and increase in input costs of raw materials, the company registered a net profit of Rs 669 crore in fiscal 2016-17, compared with Rs 787 crore achieved during the previous year, Chand said.

The Company posted a 4.4 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit to Rs 129 crore in the June quarter.

Bauxite mines achieved the highest-ever production with bauxite transportation of 68.25 lakh MT with 100 per cent capacity utilisation, and surpassed the previous best of 63.40 lakh MT.

The Alumina Refinery also hit highest-ever production with alumina hydrate output of 21.00 lakh MT (100 per cent of normative capacity), topping the previous best of 19.53 lakh MT achieved, he said.

Referring to projects under implementation, the CMD said NALCO is in the process of setting up its fifth stream in its existing alumina refinery with a capacity of 1 million tonne per annum, at a capital expenditure of Rs 5,540 crore.

NALCO also declared a 56 per cent total dividend, including Dividend Distribution Tax, amounting to Rs 651.40 crore for 2016-17, as against a dividend of 562.22 crore in the last fiscal.