Research and development work on non-ferrous minerals, metals and alloys at the National Metallurgical Laboratory

THE phenomenal growth of non- ferrous metals and their multitude alloys for a wide range of service conditions witnessed in this century by the world had its impact on India in a big way, only in the last two decades. The non- ferrous metal production was only limited to some prod-uction of copper, lead, antimony and aluminium in the coun-try, of which recent years have seen over ten-fold increase in the case of aluminium production in view of large bauxite reserves in various areas. More recently zinc production has also been started at two new factories one each in the public and private sector--the former at Udaipur based on Zawar zinc mines and the latter at Alwaye based on imported zinc concentrates. Active steps are already underway to start indigenous production of magn-esium on a semi commercial scale at Jamshedpur based on NML developed know- how and also to start another plant for production of copper with foreign technical know- how at Khetri in Rajasthan