Paulwell announces Rusal can restart mining at Alpart Jamaica

The Mining and Energy Minister, Phillip Paulwell announced on Monday that the Alpart refinery at Nain, St. Elizabeth is scheduled to be re-opened on December 1, 2016 after being closed for the last five years. The Minister said that the Cabinet has approved the submission that will allow Rusal to resume mining at the Alpart Jamaica starting next month such that they are able to export up to two million crude wet tonnes of monohydrate bauxite over an 18-month period. With the mining starting in January 2015, the exporting will commence from July 2015.

At full mining capacity the deal will employ 250 Jamaican contractors. This deal has also triggered the need for port development which will start next February, the repairs of affected roads and other related activities that will be needed to support the production and distribution of alumina in the second quarter of 2016, which includes agreed energy solutions and significant electricity supply for the reopened refinery.

Paulwell says that the company will have access to the allocation of 30 years' bauxite reserves to feed its production under the present agreement. He also says that a ethane-fuelled co-generation facility is due to be commissioned at the end of 2017 while an access to the Jamaican energy grid will also be facilitated by the authorities.

The reopened alumina refinery would then be the 600,000 tonnes per annum Boguchany Energo-Metallurgical Union aluminium smelter which will be completed in Russia's Krasnoyarsk.

Paulwell says this long awaited deal is going to change the scene of Jamaica’s bauxite and alumina industry.