Alcoa delays curtailment of Intalco smelter

Alcoa, with headquarters in New York and Pittsburgh, has announced it will delay the curtailment of its Intalco Works smelter in Ferndale, Washington, until the end of the second quarter of 2016. The plant was initially scheduled to curtail by the end of the first quarter.

The company announced a full curtailment of the Intalco smelter (230,000 metric tons) Nov. 2, 2015, with the plant’s casthouse continuing to operate. However, recent changes in energy and raw material costs have made it more cost effective in the near term to keep the smelter operating to provide molten metal to the plant’s casthouse, Alcoa says.

Once all announced curtailments and closures are complete, Alcoa says it will have removed approximately 25 percent operating smelting capacity and approximately 20 percent of operating refining capacity by mid-2016. Globally the company will have 2.1 million metric tons of operating smelting capacity and 12.3 million metric tons of operating refining capacity remaining.