A Bahrain plant making aluminium pellets and powders will double its production capacity if planned chemical plants in the Gulf materialise, a senior official of the company says.

Bahrain Atomisers International general manager Tim McLaughlin says the new plants would need about 30,000 tonnes of aluminium powder if all projects made the transition from proposal to reality. His company would double powder production capacity to 12,000 tonnes even if just 20 per cent of the plants came on line.
“All of the new capacity will constitute powders,” he said. “The chemical plants will use the powder as an additive for production of an intermediary in the chemical process. “Currently, the company does not sell much powder in the Gulf as there’s not much local delmand.”
Production in 2008 was 8,000 tonnes, 15 per cent of which was pellets and the remainder powders. Forty per cent of the product is exported to Europe, 25 per cent to Japan, 15 per cent to the US and 12 per cent to Australia with the remainder going to markets in the Far East. While powder production will increase, the company does not see demand for the pellet product going up at present.
“In the last two years a pattern is emerging. We have seen powder shipments to the US growing about 50 per cent as a result of the Free Trade Agreement with America and we expect growth to continue,” said McLaughlin.
Bahrain Atomisers is a joint venture between Germany-based Ecka Granules and Bahrain Development Bank (BDB), the later holding 51 per cent of the shares.  There are discussions going on between the two for a change in ownership.
Ecka Granules is an international leader in the high-performance sectors of alloys, metal powders and application technology. Bahrain Atomisers is responsible for marketing its own products but utilises the resources of Ecka Granule’s marketing network. The Bahrain company’s output comes from two atomisers, two powder-processing facilities and one pellet-manufacturing plant. Purity of its aluminium goes as high as 99.9 per cent and the size of the aluminium particles ranges from 3 micron to 20 mm in diameter. The company makes coarse, medium, fine and ultra-fine powders with ultra-fine being the premium product. It takes its liquid metal from the nearby Alba smelter.
About the possibility of diversification, McLauglin says: “Ecka Granules has a significant interest in other base metals such as copper, zinc and tin and is always on the lookout for new operations. There’s no plan to diversify but that is not to say it will not diversify. If indeed it does it will possibly be in the area of flake powders which Ecka Granules is making in other places.”
McLaughlin said the worldwide economic slowdown was impacting the company with a number of orders having been cancelled.