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Trimet
C o m p a n y n e w s w o r l d w i d e
at around USD120 per tonne. Nalco
will apply for forest and environment
clearance after it receives the mining
leases, and it may take five to seven
years before alumina production
starts at the export-oriented refinery.
pisolite Hills bauxite
resource upgraded by 30%
Cape Alumina has raised the bauxite
resource on its proposed 7m tpy
Pisolite Hills project in Queensland,
Australia, by 30% to 130m tonnes.
This upgraded estimate will form a
‘pivotal component’ of the bankable
feasibility study due to commence in
September 2009. There is potential
for an initial 12 to 15 year operation
at Pisolite Hills at a target production
rate of 7m tpy. The bauxite is suitable
as a blending feed for the new breed of
low-temperature Bayer-process refineries
in China. Cape Alumina expects
to start construction on the Pisolite
Hills project in early 2011.
■
recycling and secondary smelting
aleris recalls
workers on auto restarts
Aleris International Inc. said more
than 100 aluminium workers have
been recalled during July at its specification
alloy and recycling plants in
Coldwater and Saginaw/Michigan,
novelis may stop buying scrap from aB inBev
Novelis Inc. has come close to saying it will
drop its long-time arrangement for buying
much of its can scrap through Anheuser-
Busch Inbev (AB InBev), a major customer
for the resulting aluminium canstock.
Novelis North America announced it will
change its used beverage can (UBC) procurement
strategy at the end of its current
contractual commitments. Come January,
the most likely outcome will be an expanded
purchasing unit at Novelis buying
directly from recyclers and municipalities,
although there has been no rumour about
the company recruiting scrap traders.
Long-shot possibilities are outsourcing
to a nationwide scrapyard chain or
to Coca-Cola Recycling LLC, which so far
plays only a minor role as a direct scrap
supplier to Novelis, but which has greatly
expanded its staff and capabilities over
the past 18 months. It is part of Coca-Cola
Enterprises Inc. A stumbling block would
be that Coca-Cola would probably want
a fee-based tolling arrangement, with
a fixed conversion charge, while Novelis
likely would favour a buy-sell structure
for flexibility and confidentiality.
AB InBev has the twin roles of supplying
Novelis with UBCs and of buying
the canstock made from it. The two sides
of the arrangement involve different segments
of AB InBev. The sort of relation-
Steele/Alabama, and Morgantown/
Kentucky. At the ingot casting section
of the sheet mill in Lewisport/
Kentucky recalls for 25 people have
occurred, partly due to increased activity
and partly to replace retirees.
Aleris is reorganising under Chapter
11 court protection.
investment group buying
two Commercial alloys smelters
Commercial Alloys Corp.’s aluminium
smelters in Minerva/Ohio, and
Scottsboro/Alabama, which have
been part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy
case since November 2008, were sold
to an investment group headed by
David Kozin of Chicago-based Imperial
Zinc Corp.
Imperial Coldwater Group LLC,
which shares Imperial Zinc’s address,
paid USD1.3m for the two facilities,
plus a value not yet established for the
inventory. The draft of the ‘final asset
purchase agreement’ was filed in U.S.
Bankruptcy Court for the Northern
District of Ohio. Three scrap veterans
at Imperial’s branch in Angola/Indiana
– David Riddell, Aaron Stankewicz
and Corbin Grimes – will handle
metal purchase and some other
responsibilities. At one time, all three
worked for Imco Recycling, a company
which had been eventually merged
into Aleris International Inc.
The Scottsboro plant is idle, while
ship Anheuser-Busch and Novelis have
had can be very stressful, as the rolling
mill’s customer obtains intimate knowledge
over time of margins between
material cost and product price, partly
from data fed into the detailed pricing
formulas written into the contracts.
If Novelis does begin purchasing
directly from a long roster of suppliers, it
will need to make concessions to recycler
paranoia about credit risk from debtladen
scrap consumers. If the industry’s
relationships get shaken up, AB InBev
might be tempted to strengthen ties to
the smallest of the major canstock producers,
Wise Metals Group.
48 ALUMINIUM · 9/2009