London 11/01/2016 - Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) lifted its aluminium output in 2015 to a new record of 960,643 tonnes, up 3.1 percent from 931,427 tonnes in 2014.
Sales also rose to a new record of 951,944 tonnes, up 2.2 percent year-on-year, while value-added products such as billet and foundry alloys accounted for some two-thirds of total shipments, Alba said in a release over the weekend.
For the fourth quarter of 2015, sales grew 4.2 percent year-on-year to 252,582 tonnes while production rose 4.1 percent to 243,614 tonnes.
Alba, the second-largest aluminium smelter in the Middle East, is scheduled to start the construction of a sixth potline, the Line 6 project. This should come onstream in 2019 and lift capacity by 514,000 tonnes per year to 1.45 million tonnes per year.
The company, which is 69-percent owned by Bahrain sovereign fund Mumtalakat Holding, sells around 50 percent of its production to the local downstream market. It has plans to increase this further as part of the Line 6 expansion.
The rest is exported to customers in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)