Russia UC RUSAL halts Italy Eurallumina refinery

MOSCOW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The world's top aluminium producer United Company RUSAL said on Tuesday it had decided to halt another unit producing intermediate product alumina, Eurallumina, located in Italy, due to the financial crisis. It said in a statement that the refinery with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes of alumina per year will be halted for 12 months from March 1. On Monday, the West Indies Alumina Co (Windalco) said it will temporarily halt from next month its two alumina plants in Jamaica, where UC RUSAL is a majority shareholder. The capacity of the two Jamaican refineries is 1.2 million tonnes of alumina per year. A spokeswoman for UC RUSAL said on Tuesday that the company had also decided to cut output at its alumina refinery in Aughinish in Ireland. "Therefore, our total alumina production will be cut by approximately 30 percent," she said. In November, UC RUSAL said it was suspending production of alumina at its ZALK aluminium and alumina complex in Ukraine, which produced 113,000 tonnes of primary aluminium and 265,000 tonnes of alumina a year. [ID:nL3617340] In December, Interfax news agency quoted the then CEO of UC RUSAL Alexander Bulygin as saying that the company intended to cut aluminium output by 4 percent or approximately 180,000 tonnes. UC RUSAL has not yet disclosed its output in 2008. It had earlier planned to produce 4.4 million tonnes of aluminium this year. In the first half of 2008 it produced 2.2 million tonnes of aluminium and 5.7 million tonnes of alumina. (Reporting by Aleksandras Budrys)