China's Shandong Aluminium is expected to fully ramp up capacity on its new alumina project by the middle of 2007, which will lift the company's total alumina capacity to 630,000 mt/year from a previous 320,000 mt/year, a company official told Platts Wednesday.
"We have actually completed the expansion project and started the machines in December 2006. We continued with partial production in January 2007 and will gradually ramp up capacity from now till the middle of this year, which is when we expect to have the operations running fully," the official said. The 310,000 mt/year expansion took about 18 months to complete, he added.
"Demand in the market is very strong and most of our alumina output will likely be sold as our own smelting operations are relatively small," the official said. "There may be plans to expand our metal operations as well in the future, but there are no definite details in that area yet," he added.
Shandong Aluminium has a 62,000 mt/year metal capacity, of which 55,000 mt/year consists of primary ingots and 7,000 mt/year of alloys.
In 2007, the official said the company was likely to maintain metal output target at full capacity, but alumina output will "depend on how the new operations work out as we ramp up." He did not have details for the company's 2006 output figures, and another company official said "the figures are not available yet as we are still compiling our full year results for 2006."
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