Alba’s Line 6 expansion project likely to be completed by July 31, 2019

According to a recent report, Alba’s Line 6 expansion project is expected to be completed by July 31, 2019. The news came after the company’s CEO Tim Murray revealed the due date on the sidelines of the launch of Alba’s special summer Safety Campaign.

In mid-April, Alba had started an additional 106 pots in Line 6 expansion, which brought a total of 212 pots in function, equivalent to 50 per cent of Line 6 production capacity.

Tim Murray, CEO of Alba, said in an interview to Oxford Business Group’s online broadcasting channel, that once the state-of-the-art Line 6 expansion project is complete, it will boost capacity at the smelter by 540,000 tonnes, producing a positive knock-on effect on the national economy.

 “Today Alba and the whole industry is about 12% of GDP. With Line 6, the forecast is that it will go up to maybe 15% or 16%,” he added.

Murray also said that the project would produce around 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs in the downstream segment, both direct and indirect.

In the broadcast, he acknowledged that the volatile market in aluminium industry made the overall global operation really difficult, producing lower LME prices and higher alumina costs. Nonetheless, he remained bullish about the outlook.

He said, “If you look at aluminium, it's pretty much in everything,”

“The outlook for the sector remains bright, despite the challenging operating environment, with demand from the construction industry set to remain strong, and both the automotive and aerospace segments increasingly turning to aluminium as a lightweight substitute for steel,” he concluded.