National Aluminium Company (Nalco), the country's largest state-owned aluminium major, has cut prices by Rs 3,000 per tonne, in line with a fall in international price of the metal.
This is the third consecutive price cut by Nalco in step with sliding metal prices on the benchmark London Metal Exchange (LME). The company had cut price by Rs.6,500 and Rs.2,000 on March 1 and March 22, across all products last month. Price of aluminium metal has been falling over last two months on the LME and has reached to $1,900 per tonne.
Poor sentiment in the metals market has forced producers to sustain low prices leading to an inventory pileup. Nalco, which earned Rs 3,400 crore in forex earnings out of total sales of over Rs 7,200 crore in FY 13, has said it was forced to cut down metal production marginally to 4.03 lakh tonne from 4.13 lakh tonnes, due to planned shutdown of pot shells of the smelter.
According to Ansuman Das, chairman and managing director of Nalco, besides the coal shortage, dwindling LME prices of the metal forced the company to cut down its production of metal to some extent.
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