Dubal commissions Dh100m aluminium ingot casting plant

Dubai Aluminium Company (Dubal), one of the major aluminium producers in the Middle East, has recently commissioned the Dh100 million casthouse-3 machinery in collaboration with the Italian major Properzi.

Dubal has thus become the first company in the region to install and commission this advanced state-of-the-art equipment.

"This initiative is in line with the directives of Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, UAE Minister for Finance and Industry and Chairman of Dubal, with an eye on the company's long-term prospects. This is part of Dubal's constant endeavour to offer products that suit the specifications of the end-users," said Yousuf Abdullah Bastaki, Dubal's senior project manager

With the successful installation of the ingot casting machine, casthouse-3 now has a capacity of 80,000 tonnes a year of hot metal in different alloys that will help meet individual requirements of customers in Asia, Europe and North America.

A statement from the company said Dubal also has reserved an option to buy two more casting machines from the Italian company.

Casthouse plays a critical role in aluminium production by converting molten aluminium to saleable product.

Dubal's casting is a combination of continuous and batch processes, and operates 24 hours a day with more than 200 different products and a total annual casting capability of over one million tonnes.

"The capital investment will add value to Dubal operations and will enable the company to offer different products for industrial end-use. The focus of this project is also flexibility in designing products for various customers even though automobile manufacturers worldwide are the main end-users," Bastaki said.

The installation process of the Italian cast machine started a year ago and was completed on July 25. The machine enables high quality production from the initial extraction of the raw material, through its molten process to the aluminium's final packaged form.