Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) is now looking at the electricity option rather than depend on gas for any future expansion of the smelter, said the company chairman Mahmood Hashim Al Kooheji.

The GCC power grid had thrown up “big opportunities” making it possible to reduce gas requirements significantly. “We might even need just electricity and not gas,” he said.

The company was considering replacing Potlines 1 and 2, which were not efficient, with a new potline, and studies were focusing on that aspect and on factors that could make another expansion as cost-effective as possible.

Al Kooheji said any upgrade would raise total capacity to around 1.25 million tonnes annually.
 
The smelter produces more than 870,000 tonnes per year of a range of products including standard and T-ingots, extrusion billets, rolling slab, propertzi ingots and molten aluminium. Around 45 per cent of the output is supplied to Bahrain’s downstream industry.

Al Kooheji also said Alba had not given up on taking stakes in companies operating in the raw materials field including mining. It was examining opportunities as they came. – TradeArabia News Service