Aluminium Bahrain’s  (Alba) Potline 5 start-up phase will begin on March 7, 2005 with the 100-day start-up period possibly the shortest ever for a project of its kind, the company’s CEO Bruce Hall said.

“Our intention is that the start-up will be twice as fast as anyone has started,” said Hall, adding it would be a “source of pride and sense of achievement.”
Hall said the full complement of 336 pots, positioned in two rooms, each of 1 km in length, would yield the full capacity of metal for the potline by mid-June 2005. Line 5 has the world’s largest number of pots, Alba officials said.
Potline 5 will have a capacity of 320,000 tonnes per year (tpy) raising total capacity to 840,000 tpy. The $1.7 billion project is now at its busiest with some 7,500 workers labouring on site. Bechtel is the engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) contractor.
In the run up to the start-up, Line 5 celebrated in early November the handover of the first set of 42 assembled pots to Alba’s existing operations, marking a significant milestone in the project’s development. The Line 5 project team commemorated this achievement with a fitting handover ceremony at the project’s smelter.
The handover of the 42 pots was completed on time and this accomplishment provides the Line 5 operations team with additional preparation time for the pot start-up and first hot metal production in March. The first set of 42 pots is out of a total of 336 pots envisaged in this project. The pots are used to produce hot metal following an electrolysis process adopted in the AP-30 technology - considered to be the latest in the aluminium industry.
“I would like to thank the Line 5 reduction team and the contractors for their hard work and effort in achieving such a milestone safely and within schedule” commented Niall O’Byrne, general manager - for the Line 5 expansion.
As part of the expansion, Power Station 4 - a 660-megawatt (MW) plant - is being installed to add to the total existing capacity of 1,500 MW. Alstom is the EPC contractor for Power Station 4 and Mott MacDonald is the engineering and construction manager for the powerhouse development. Other new facilities include Casthouse 3, which will have a production of 300,000 tonnes of ingots and billets, and a carbon plant with the capacity to produce 190,000 anodes per year for the reduction line.  The project includes a 100,000 tpy expansion to Casthouse 2’s capacity of around 250,000 tpy.
Hall said the company would not target new markets as the priority was to meet demand from Bahrain itself and serve existing customers elsewhere. About 100,000 tonnes from the new production would go to Bahrain customers, leaving 200,000 tonnes for overseas markets. Any spare capacity could go to the new markets of Thailand and Vietnam. Currently, Bahrain and other GCC states account for about 63 to 64 per cent of sales with most of the remainder shipped to the Far East.
Hall said aluminium prices were still strong at $1,475 per tonne and expected to rise well above that in 2005. He did not see any threat from any possible new capacity in the Gulf in the near term, as world markets were generally extensive with little protectionism. Producers installed closer to energy sources would have cost advantages and be in a better position to stay competitive than producers lacking proximity to energy sources.
In other remarks, Hall said Alba could not at the moment seriously think of supplying to Western markets considering that Europe had a six per cent import duty in place while freight charges for shipments to the US were very high.
Discussing the possibility that US firm Alcoa could take a stake in Alba, the official said there had been no progress in talks between the Bahraini Ministry of Finance and Alcoa and currently no negotiations were going on. The Bahraini government holds 77 per cent of the stake, Saudi Public Investment Fund 20 per cent and Breton Investments 3 per cent.
Commenting on Alba’s power ties with Bahrain’s Ministry of Electricity, Hall said ministry was not interested in renewing a contract for Alba electricity that expired at the beginning of this year. Alba would be in a position to supply power to the ministry after the completion of Potline 5 if the government was interested. The company had supplied power for three days to the ministry following a nationwide blackout in August.
Meanwhile, no decision has yet been taken about Potline 6, which the Alba management said would raise production capacity by some 300,000 tpy from the level of 840,000 tpy materialising after Potline 5.
Earlier this year Hall had said the investment would be in the region of $1.3 billion, several hundred million dollars less than the cost of Potline 5.
He explained there would be advantages from “the synergies” of previous potlines. For example, production from Casthouse 3 and the expansion in Casthouse 2 would meet the needs of Potline 6.
However, the expansion would necessitate building another power plant.