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Alcoa to Curtail Smelting and Refining Capacity to Further Drive Upstream Competitiveness

The company will reduce aluminum smelting capacity by 503 000 t/a and alumina refining capacity by 1,2 Mt/a. Alcoa will begin the curtailments in the fourth quarter of 2015 and will complete them by the end of the first quarter of 2016. Once these actions are complete, Alcoa will have closed, divested or curtailed 45 % of total smelting operating capacity since 2007. In its aluminum business, Alcoa will idle the Intalco and Wenatchee primary aluminum smelters in Washington State, and the Massena West smelter in New York. The Company will not modernize the New York Massena East smelter and will permanently close the facility; potlines at Massena East have been closed since March 2014. The casthouses at Intalco and Massena West, which produce value-add shaped products, will continue to operate. The Alcoa Forgings and Extrusions facility in Massena is unaffected. In its alumina business, Alcoa will partially curtail refining capacity at its Pt. Comfort, Texas facility by about 1,2 Mt/a. Once these actions are implemented, Alcoa will have curtailed or closed 673 000 t/a of uncompetitive smelting capacity and 2,5 Mt/a of uncompetitive refining capacity since its announced review of 500 000 t/a of smelting capacity and 2,8 Mt/a of refining capacity in March 2015. As previously announced, Alcoa will separate into two, industry-leading publicly-traded companies in the second half of 2016 – an upstream-focused company including its mining, refining, smelting, energy and casting businesses, and a value-add company including its global rolled products, engineered products and solutions, and transportation and construction solutions businesses.


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