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Point Comfort Alcoa to Cut Production

Alumina-producer Alcoa is cutting back about half of its capacity at its Point Comfort plant, resulting in a layoff of 135 workers, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

From: www.victoriaadvocate.comDate: 2015-11-07 02:27:45Views: 895

Alumina is a white granular material, a little finer than table salt, and is properly called aluminum oxide. Alumina is transformed into aluminum metal in the smelting process. Alumina-producer Alcoa is cutting back about half of its capacity at its Point Comfort plant, resulting in a layoff of 135 workers, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

Alcoa announced this week it would be cutting back production companywide - including slowing down the Point Comfort plant by about 1.2 million metric tons - to save money in a market with an increasingly low price for alumina.

The plant employs 726 now, and 135 of those will be laid off because of the cutbacks, the company spokesman said. Across the company, Alcoa plans to cut about 1,500 jobs.

Alcoa has been producing in Calhoun County since 1948, and the plant sits on 3,000 acres.

Port Lavaca City Manager Bob Turner said the city was caught off guard by the announcement of the cutbacks.

"We just found out about this yesterday," Turner said Wednesday. "We probably would have had a better contingency plan, if we would have been in on the decision."

The cutbacks come in the middle of the company's split into two publicly traded entities that was announced in late September.

When the economy took a downturn, the demand for aluminum declined and an excess supply drove prices down, according to a Feb. 25 report on the alumina market by an analyst at visiongain.com.

In the report, Alcoa was named as one of the nine leading aluminum companies.

Alcoa as a whole has closed or slowed 45 percent of its total smelting operating capacity since 2007 with this companywide curtailment, according to a release from the company.

The visiongain.com report estimates the aluminum industry will have more consumption than is manufactured in 2015, which should cut back on the surplus stored in the London Metal Exchange.

About Alcoa

Last year, Alcoa reported $23.9 billion in sales, according to the company website. Of that, alumina, which is produced at the Point Comfort plant, accounted for $3.5 billion.

 

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