China's Weiqiao Aluminium has limited its alumina production to 900,000 mt in 2007 in a bid to support alumina prices, a company official confirmed to Platts Wednesday.
"We have started to reduce production in January and we have limited ourselves to produce just 900,000 mt this year. This is lower than the actual 1.2 million mt we produced last year," the official said. "We have a design capacity of 2 million mt/year but our actual working capacity is only about 1.6 million mt/year due to some technical issues," he added.
Weiqiao is one of seven non-Chalco domestic alumina producers who got together earlier in Shandong this year and decided on joint cutbacks to support price. Among the seven, Weiqiao and Chiping Aluminium are said to be the largest, with a design capacity of 2 million mt/year each.
The Weiqiao official, however, said that the company may resume normal production again later in the year if market conditions improved. "It all depends on prices, if prices rise further, then we may return to normal output again," he said.
Meanwhile, another company official said primary ingot production will remain at full capacity in 2007. "We will probably still produce a full 250,000 mt/year of ingot this year, which is in line with output in 2006. Our upgrading project remains in progress so we are unlikely to see any output from that for the year," he said.
Weiqiao is currently upgrading a new plant in the nearby Zouping city, which would increase the company's total capacity to 750,000-800,000 mt/year when in operation. "The Zouping plant is expected to have a 510,000 mt/year capacity, but it may be a little more when fully upgraded, we can't be exact now," the official said. "We started work on the Zouping project last year and are striving to complete it this year, but there are no definite deadlines," he added.
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