Groundbreaking for Garmco’s $50m aluminium remelt plant held in Bahrain

Groundbreaking for Gulf Aluminium Rolling Mills Company's (Garmco) $55 million aluminium remelt plant was held on Thursday near the company’s main production facilities in Bahrain.

The project, which is part of a three-year programme aiming to increase profitability and explore opportunities for the company in the regional as well international markets, is due for completion by November 2017. On completition, the remelt plant will produce 120,000 tonnes of aluminium slabs and create around 50 new jobs while generating significant cost savings. France’s Fives has EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract with Garmco for this project.

The event was attended by Bahrain’s Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Zayed Al Zayani, and the French Minister of Foreign Trade, Mathias Fekl.

Jean-Baptiste Lucas, chief executive of Garmco, said the turnkey project would be central to the company's entire operations. “The project goes in line with our strategy to become a regional leader in aluminium recycling as well as further building its capability to reach across global markets in collaboration with world-class partners,” he said.

Fives’ chief representative in the Middle East, Francois Pahmer, said the EPC contract was important for his company which since 2003 had installed more than 50 furnaces in the region with integrated casthouse solutions. “Fives had mostly been known as a technology partner for the smelters while our activities do span both primary and secondary aluminium production. It’s a great opportunity to showcase our capabilities in this field, even more so that it happens in Bahrain, a strategic country for our aluminium business.”

Pahmer said the aluminium remelt project is important for two reasons: firstly it is based on the concept of aluminium recyclability and secondly it is state-of-the-art, “which is not always the case with downstream industry in the Gulf.” Equipment at the Bahrain plant would be “first class and top-notch” with a low environmental footprint and low energy consumption, thereby decreasing the cost of operations and improving Garmco’s competitiveness. It would make Garmco more environmentally friendly and push value addition, he said. Pahmer also pointed out at the fact that although the Gulf region has made huge capital investments on smelters in recent times it had been still exporting scrap aluminium at low prices.

Minister Fekl described the remelt expansion as a strategic project as it would help generate significant employment opportunities in the region.

Production capacity at Garmco’s main mill in Bahrain is 160,000 tonnes annually while its aluminium foil mill can produce 20,000 tonnes. The sales turnover in 2014 was approximately $450 million, but both sales value and production in 2015 were down by around 10 per cent at a time when LME prices were still weak. The company ships some 75 per cent of its output to markets outside the GCC region. In 2015, the US contributed around 20 to 25 p - er cent of total sales, the best-yielding market. The Middle East was next with a share of eight to 10 per cent.

Garmco is exploring the possibility of opening a service centre in the Middle East. The site has not yet been decided but could be located in Saudi Arabia or in Bahrain.