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2003-06-05
Alcoa improvements continuing
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Third project ready to get under way
Alcoa Warrick Operations is finishing two multimillion-dollar investments and preparing to start a third - investments that will return a former product line to the plant and improve overall efficiency.
The Indiana Department of Commerce will give the Warrick plant up to $200,000 to train about 1,000 employees in the operation of $22 million of new equipment.
"Long term, we need investments like this to keep us competitive," said Sally Rideout, a plant spokeswoman.
Rideout said Alcoa applied for more than $200,000, but this was the maximum offered by the state for the program. She said the new equipment will be installed during the next year.
In announcing the grant, Indiana Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan said he was pleased with the growth of the Warrick plant.
The grant comes as two other large investments in Warrick Operations are being completed. The plant recently installed two roll-casters at a cost of $11 million. Molten aluminum will be poured into the roll-casters, which will form the metal into a thin roll rather than ingot, as the plant's current roll-casters do.
The new roll-casters will enable the plant to make aluminum soffits, gutters and downspouts - a product line Warrick Operations abandoned years ago because it could not make the products competitively, Rideout said.
The Warrick plant competed with other Alcoa plants nationwide to acquire the roll-casters to begin making the product, Rideout said.
Also, the plant is now rebuilding a ring furnace at a cost of about $22 million, Rideout said. That project is scheduled to be finished around July 1.
A ring furnace is where the company bakes carbon anodes, which are used in the aluminum smelting process. The Warrick plant's ring furnace was 20 years old and needed constant repair, Rideout said.
Without a ring furnace, the company would need to either bring in carbon anodes from another Alcoa facility, or stop smelting aluminum.
"The investment in that ring furnace is, again, good for the smelting side of our business," Rideout said.
Warrick Operations, in southern Warrick County, smelts and turns molten aluminum into tops and tabs for the beverage industry and into cans for food containers, Rideout said. Warrick Operations also operates a power plant.
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