UC RUSAL launches ALSCON in Nigeria

The world’s largest producer of aluminum and alumina, UC RUSAL has recently launched ALSCON plant in Nigeria. The company is planning to fully upgrade all the production processes and make the plant produce 197,000 tons of aluminum a year in 2010. The upgrading program will cost about $300m to complete.

Having bought ALSCON’s shareholding in February 2007, RUSAL decided to revive the plant that had been idle for eight years. The upgrading program covers both the construction jobs and the improvements in the technological field. The plant consists of two electrolysis departments, a gas-generating power station, and a port on the River Imo. So far, the plant has been fitted with the foundry production facilities, dry gas cleaning units, and the automated system of technological supervision that has already proved efficient in RUSAL‘s numerous enterprises all over the world. In addition, two gas-turbine units and the anodic shop were repaired.

Moreover, RUSAL is about to introduce a new type of electrolytic bath that is more productive and durable. Ten baths have already been installed at the plant, with forty more to be launched in March 2008 and 140 baths to be launched throughout the year 2008.

ALSCON is expected to provide jobs for 1,900 workers at the plant and 20,000 jobs for people living in the state of Akwa Ibom through infrastructure and small and medium-scale business development.

The upgrading program includes the deepening of the river bed for making direct water shipments possible. RUSAL announced a tender for those willing to handle the deepening process in the second half of 2008. The locals have been consulted and their interests taken into account.

'The launch of the plant in Nigeria means RUSAL sticks with its strategy of creating a full production cycle in Western Africa and proves that we are capable of developing our business on all the five continents. We are happy to employ our production technologies and our managerial experience to create an effective hi-tech enterprise that will contribute to the region’s development greatly, provide new workplaces, and improve the country’s social well-being through infrastructure development and social projects,’ UC RUSAL’s GD Alexander Bulygin says.

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