Capacity Of Bluff Smelter Increased

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32351, 17 July 1970, Page 1

Capacity Of Bluff Smelter Increased

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 16. New Zealand’s aluminium smelter under construction at Bluff will now cost s9sm as a result of a decision by the three overseas shareholding companies to boost eventual production from 73,000 tons of aluminium a year to 110,000 tons.

The decision was announced in a statement today by New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, Ltd, the company formed by the shareholders to build the smelter.

NJS.A.S. said the additional capacity of the smelter would become available in the second quarter of 1972. . Work on the first stage, due for completion by July, 1971, was about 22 per cent complete and foundations and structures for the main smelter buildings were about 65 per cent finished. The shareholders in N.Z.A.S. are Comalco, Ltd (50 per cent), and the Japanese industrial giants, Showa

Denko K.K. and Sumitomo Chemical Company, Ltd, which each hold 25 per cent. The N.Z.A.S. statement said that once the first stage of the smelter, with production capacity of 73,000 tons of aluminium a year, was completed work on the expansion to 110,000 tons capacity would begin immediately. The total estimated construction cost of the smelter at 110,000 tons was s9sm. “More than s2om of this has already been committed for expenditure on goods and services produced in New Zealand,” the company said “It is expected that a tota of about s4om will be speni

> in this country before comple- , tion of the programme.” More than 700 persons are I now employed in construction : of the smelter, and key staff • are being cained at Comalco’s ■ smelter at Bell Bay, in Tas--1 mania.