Alba will modernise facilities to boost output

Paris:  Aluminium Bahrain, or Alba, will focus on modernising its older production facilities if and when it has approved an expansion and bedded that down, the company's chief executive told Dow Jones Newswires.

Laurent Schmitt said in an interview on Friday the expansion, which would add a new sixth smelter potline, would see first metal produced in 2015 and increase production by 400,000 metric tonnes. The smelter currently produces 870,000 tonnes a year.

A prefeasibility study into energy and smelting technology will be completed by year-end and the company aims to launch a bankable feasibility study in early 2012, for completion and then the potential green light to go ahead by the end of next year.

"This is already a nice step ahead — we want to focus our attention on this for the next five years," he said. "Beyond that, we'll think about revamping lines one and two, which are 40 years old, while line three is 30 years old," he added.

Alba is already looking at ways to modernise and improve efficiency at lines four and five, a process known as ‘capacity creep' that would yield a further 80,000 tonnes of annual output over a period of time. The producer supplies about half of Bahrain's downstream aluminum industry's needs and about half the aluminum consumed in the entire Gulf Cooperation Council region.