Photo by: Bloomberg
VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Aluminium producer Alcoa said Tuesday it will permanently close the Suralco aluminium smelter in Suriname, which has been languishing fully curtailed since November 2015.
Pending completion of negotiations with the Suriname government regarding the Suralco’s remaining activities in the South American country, Alcoa will continue to operate the Afobaka hydroelectric facility, which supplied power to the Suralco operations.
Alcoa, which recently split its upstream business from the more profitable downstream specialist manufacturing business, said it expects to book after-tax fourth-quarter charges of $90-million related to the restructuring exercise, with its share of the total costs associated with the closure estimated to be $151-million over five years, with $27-million to be spent in 2017.
Alcoa also said it would record a $31-million non-cash, after-tax charge associated with its interests in a Western Australia gas field.
The total impact of the charges is estimated to be $0.66 a share.
Alcoa said a power outage at the Portland Aluminum smelter in Victoria, Australia is not expected to have a significant unfavourable impact on fourth-quarter results.
The smelter was hit by a power outage on December 1, when a power interconnector between the states of Victoria and South Australia went down, knocking out power to both the plant's pot lines for about five-and-a-half hours.