Alcoa to invest $275m in automotive aluminium sheet production
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – US-based aluminium products producer Alcoa on Thursday said it would invest $275-million over the next three years to expand and convert capacity at its rolling mill in Alcoa, Tennessee, to support automotive producers’ plans to use more aluminium sheet to increase fuel efficiency, safety, durability and performance of cars and light trucks.
Alcoa said it wanted to meet the growing demand for light, durable and recyclable aluminium sheet for automotive production.
Alcoa had previously announced a $300-million expansion of its Davenport, Iowa plant, which was expected to be complete by the end of this year.
“More and more auto producers are turning to aluminium to increase the fuel efficiency and quality of their vehicles – we anticipate a quadrupling of auto sheet volume by 2015 and a tenfold increase by 2025,” Alcoa chairperson and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said in a statement.
Alcoa, which on Wednesday said it would review 460 000 t of smelting capacity over the next 15 months for possible curtailment, in an effort to maintain the company’s competitiveness, as aluminium prices have fallen more than 33% since their peak in 2011, on Thursday said the Tennessee expansion could add 200 full-time, high-value jobs when complete.
The project would convert some of the plant’s can sheet capacity to high-strength automotive aluminium capacity, as well as install incremental automotive capacity.
The Tennessee expansion was scheduled to begin this month and be completed by mid-2015.
When completed, the plant would be a critical supplier to both the packaging and automotive markets.
The company said much of the volume for the automotive expansion was already secured under long-term supply agreements.
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