State-governor believes Venalum can achieve 436,000 tons of aluminium production

Francisco Rangel Gómez, the state governor of Venezuelan south east state Bolivar, is hopeful that the state owned smelter Venalum will be able to produce 436,000 tons of aluminium, while the official was on a plant visit inspecting the asphalt paving of several areas of the factory.

The official informed that when Venezuela was suffering a severe drought, causing the river to dry making electrical power scarce, Venalum had stepped up with workers switching off almost half of their cells to provide electricity for the country. Recovery from that point is difficult and workers are still working hard towards achieving that goal, he said.

He points out the resilience of the workers by stating that when there was an oil strike in 2002-2003, Venalum still managed to break a production record, so he has no doubt that the workers will be able to achieve the 436,000 tons production target.

Venalum is currently exhausting only 22% of its installed capacity with only 200 working cells out of the total 905 cells installed. The smelter hit a supply shortfall in 2014 producing nearly 20,000 tons less than the aluminium produced in 2013.