Metal Products News
- Baotou Aluminum seeks expansion
Date: 20-Dec-2006 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
BAOTOU Aluminum Co. aims at boosting smelting capacity more than 66 percent to more than 500,000 tons in the coming few years, a company official said yesterday.
The move would form part of a capacity boom at State-owned Aluminum Corp. of China, or Chinalco, which has said it aims to increase its smelting capacity to 5 million tons of aluminum by 2010, from 3.5 million tons this year and 2.1 million tons in 2005.
This is despite the government's policy of cooling investment in the resource-intensive aluminum industry.
Chinalco, the world's second-largest producer of alumina through listed Chalco, owns a majority stake in Baotou Aluminum. It is expected to inject that stake into Chalco next year.
'Our capacity will be upgraded to more than 500,000 tons,'the Baotou Aluminum official said.
Baotou Aluminum has annual smelting capacity of 300,000 tons of aluminum. It would produce 240,000 tons of primary aluminum in 2006.
Chalco is seeking to build another 300,000-ton-per-year aluminum smelter in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, home to Baotou Aluminum.
Chalco has expanded aluminum smelting capacity over the past two years, to help its huge production of alumina, through acquisitions of rivals and upgrading of existing smelters.
Those acquisitions included stakes in Jiaozuo Wangfang Aluminum Industry Co., Lanzhou Aluminum Co. and a joint venture smelter with Shanxi Guanlu Co.
Shanxi Huaze Aluminum and Power Co., which is 60 percent owned by Chalco and 40 percent held by Shanxi Zhangze Power Co., is adding 140,000 tons of smelting capacity in Hejin City, an official for the city's planning division said. 'They are applying to add 140,000 tons of capacity,'the city official in northern China's Shanxi Province said. He added the construction of the new capacity would be completed in June next year.
The expansion would boost Shanxi Huaze's smelting capacity to 420,000 tons of aluminum a year.
The smelter also aims to build a 100,000 ton-per-year plant to produce aluminum alloy, the city official said.
Chalco is also seeking to add 250,000 tons of smelting capacity a year at the Pingguo plant in southern China's Guangxi. The plant has designed capacity of 135,000 tons of aluminum a year.
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