special - Alu-web.de

Hydro
COMPANY NEWS WORLDWIDE
country that remains poor despite its
shipments of bauxite and other minerals.
The brief protest over jobs at the
alumina refinery ended without loss
of production after one day.
Bosai Group receives
Ghanian approval for
Awaso Bauxite ownership
China’s Bosai group has obtained final
Ghanian government approval to take
an 80% stake in the Awaso bauxite
mine. Bosai purchased the 80% stake
from Rio Tinto in October 2009 and
obtained clearance from Chinese authorities
at the end of 2009. Bosai had
spent USD30m on acquiring the mine,
which has reserves of around 100m
tonnes. Awaso can produce above
600,000 tpy of bauxite which Bosai
aims to increase to 1m tpy.
Besides Awaso, the Chinese mining
group is keen to enter the region’s
alumina and aluminium sector. Bosai
wants to build a 1m tpy alumina refinery
in Ghana and is in talks to buy
Valco, the closed local 200,000 tpy
smelter. Bosai also owns a bauxite
mine in Guinea, which can produce
1m tpy of bauxite of all grades. �
Recycling and secondary smelting
Alcoa to provide recycling
bins throughout the US
Alcoa will provide 50,000 recycling
bins to organisations and communities
throughout the US as part of its
2010 Recycling Bin Programme. Alcoa
and the Aluminum Association
have a goal of increasing the recycling
rates of aluminium beverage cans in
the US from the current 54% up to
75% by the year 2015. This bin distribution
programme is just one way to
make it easier for people to collect the
scrap. As it has done for the past two
years, Alcoa is partnering with state
recycling organisations to establish
individual allocations based upon locally-identified
needs. Interested individuals
or groups should contact their
state recycling organisations or state
agencies of environmental protection
for more details. Alcoa Recycling first
started providing bins in 2008 and has
given bins to municipalities, colleges,
Native American tribes, and community-based
organisations in 19 states.
Rio Tinto Alcan to invest
USD7.6m in Beauharnois facility
Rio Tinto Alcan plans to invest
USD7.6m in its Beauharnois/Quebec
facility to maintain casting production
to serve its primary foundry market
customers. Construction work and
other preparations are under way
and additional capacity could be online
as early as this spring. The collaboration
between Rio Tinto Alcan’s
R&D centres, clients and partners will
help the Beauharnois facility offer uninterrupted
service to its customers
and draw from its technical expertise
and strong supply network during
the transition. The facility ceased its
smelting operations in spring 2009
but has continued its casting activities.
The renovated centre will employ
approx. 35 people.
�
Aluminium semis
NORTH AMERICA
Novelis relocates headquarters
from Cleveland to Atlanta
Novelis Inc. announced that approx.
80 professional positions will be
moving to Atlanta as the company
relocates its North American headquarters
from Cleveland to its world
headquarters here. This consolidation,
when combined with other expected
staff additions, will bring Novelis’
Atlanta staff to some 220 people
by the end of 2010. Novelis currently
has about 12,000 employees in 11
countries spanning four continents.
The company selected Atlanta as its
world headquarters in 2005 when it
was spun off from Canadian aluminium
producer Alcan. The move is the
latest in a series of steps taken by the
company over the past year designed
to realign its global operations, con-
The Author
The author, Dipl.-Ing. R. P. Pawlek,
is founder of TS+C, Technical Info
Services and Consulting, Sierre
(Switzerland), a new service for the
primary aluminium industry. He is also
the publisher of the standard works
Alumina Refineries and Producers of
the World and Primary Aluminium
Smelters and Producers of the World.
These reference works are continually
updated and contain useful technical
and economic information on all
alumina refineries and primary aluminium
smelters of the world. They
are available as loose-leaf files and/or
CD-ROMs from the Aluminium-Verlag,
Marketing & Kommunikation GmbH
in Düsseldorf, Germany.
54 ALUMINIUM · 4/2010