Alcoa re aligns China strategy to support expanding footprint in fast growing market

Alcoa announced that effective July 1st 2011, the Company’s Asia Pacific regional headquarters will report to Alcoa’s Business Excellence and Corporate Strategy organization part of an initiative to support the expanding footprint of Alcoa’s three business groups in the fast growing and strategically important Chinese market.

As part of this initiative, Mr Jinya Chen president of Asia Pacific Regional was elected a VP of Alcoa by the Company’s Board of Directors. While continuing to lead the region, Chen will report to Mr Kay Meggers VP of Corporate Initiatives and will have overall accountability for Alcoa’s China strategy.

The Company also announced that Mr Jiming Zhu will join Alcoa as President, China Rolled Products with responsibility for managing all of Alcoa’s Global Rolled Products operations in China. Mr Zhu will succeed Mr Mark Vrablec, who was earlier named Vice President, GRP Technology and Engineering and will move back to the United States after a transition. Zhu will join Alcoa in mid July, reporting to Mr Helmut Wieser executive VP of Alcoa and Group President, Alcoa Global Rolled Products and working closely with Mr Chen.

Mr Klaus Kleinfeld chairman and CEO of Alcoa said that “We expect Mr Jinya and Mr Jiming to be an unbeatable Alcoa team in China. Mr Jinya helped build Alcoa’s strong foundation in China and now he also will be responsible for developing and driving all aspects of our China strategy as Alcoa expands in one of our most vital markets. Mr Jiming will lead the operations and growth of our largest business in China building on our solid market presence. Expanding our reach to customers in China’s automotive, packaging and consumer electronics markets our rolled products business is targeting to grow three times faster than the market in the next three years.”