Singapore 24/05/2016 - Australia’s Bell Bay Aluminium (BBA) plans to return to full production in around five weeks on sufficient power supply owing to significant rainfall, the company said in a statement late last week.
The smelter, which is located on the Tamar River near George Town in Northern Tasmania, had earlier planned to reduce power consumption by around ten percent for 4-5 months starting February. This was due to the outage of an undersea cable which connects Tasmania to Australia’s power grid, along with historically low rainfalls and dam storage levels in the island state off Australia’s south coast.
Recent significant recent has since provided sufficient power supply to trigger BBA’s return to full production.
“The rainfall has been what we’ve all been hoping for. We’re delighted to be ramping up about a month earlier than we first planned,” Ray Mostogl, BBA’s general manager, said in the statement.
The 100-percent Rio Tinto-owned BBA produced 190,000 tonnes of aluminium in 2015. It produces aluminium in ingots, blocks and T-bars which are primarily sold to Asia, India and Australia.