Hindalco has posted yet another strong financials on the back of strong metal prices and sale of low cost inventory. Satish Pai, Managing Director, Hindalco Industries shares his views on way ahead.
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Hindalco has indicated that it has another ₹50,000 crore to deploy. Where do you see the major opportunities?
The strategy has not changed from what we outlined earlier. We will continue to expand upstream as well as downstream.
Our biggest investments are going into the new copper smelter and copper wire rod plant. We will also expand smelting and refining, as well as our rolling operations. Most of these are brownfield opportunities.
We are an incumbent player with an established supply chain and infrastructure, which makes these expansions relatively easier to execute. This applies to our operations in India as well as in southern Odisha.
How do you see costs moving over the next quarter?
The September quarter costs are likely to be around 4-5 per cent higher than Q1 because the cost of gas and furnace oil has started to increase. However, we still have the benefit of some lower-cost inventory. Therefore, Q2 will probably represent the peak in our costs, after which we expect costs to start coming down.
Is there any progress on anti-dumping duties relating to aluminium products and other imports?
Scrap already attracts an import duty of 2.5 per cent. Anti-dumping duties apply to certain products coming into India. We continue to have several cases before the Directorate General of Trade Remedies, particularly relating to imports from China, including certain flat and rolled products. There are a number of anti-dumping cases under consideration.
Would an India-EU free trade agreement benefit Hindalco’s downstream aluminium products?
The India-EU free trade agreement will not make a significant difference unless the issue of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is resolved.
The biggest challenge for exporting to Europe is compliance with CBAM. The Indian government has been trying to get CBAM addressed as part of the India-EU negotiations, but there is still no clear answer.
Will insurance recovery will be lower from Oswego fire than estimated earlier?
Those are essentially precautionary statements that companies are required to make. In fact, the situation is getting better. In July, we received another $180 million, taking the insurance recovery to around $480 million.
We had earlier indicated that we expected to recover around 70-75 per cent of the loss, or approximately $1.2 billion. We are now feeling very confident that we will achieve that level of recovery.
Published on August 7, 2026
