Aluminium Plant To Expand

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31366, 11 May 1967, Page 17

Aluminium Plant To Expand

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

SYDNEY, May 10.

Queensland Alumina, Ltd., will sell SU.S. 20m of secured bonds in Europe to provide the initial finance for expanding production at its plant at Gladstone, Queensland.

A group of United States banks and an unnamed Australian bank will provide most of the remaining funds needed, the company’s managing director (Mr E. H. Sanguine) said in a statement.

Total cost of the expansion, which will lift annual production from 600,000 tons of alumina to 900,000 tons will be about $45 million. The Gladstone plant, which will be one of the biggest in the world when the expansion is completed, refines bauxite from Comalco’s field at Weipa, in Northern Queensland, into alumina. Alumina from Gladstone would be sent to Bluff, for smelting into aluminium if Comalco goes ahead with its

plans to build the New Zealand smelter. The “Australian Financial Review” said today that the expansion, which would take about two years to complete, would eventually generate export earnings for Australia of more than s37m a year. “The announcement of the expansion plan within weeks of initial production reflects the rapid progress in bringing the complex dollars sllsm plant successfully on stream,” the newspaper said. Partners in the Queensland Alumina project are Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation of the United States, Alcan Aluminium Ltd., of Canada, the Pechiney company, of France, and Conzinc Riotinto of Australia, Ltd.