Alcoa's target is January 1 to restart the first of three aluminum-making potlines at the company's idled Warrick Operations smelter near Yankeetown in Warrick County, Indiana, a United Steelworkers union official said Friday.
"They're looking to have it in operation in five months," said Chris Horn, president of USW Local 104 at Warrick Operations. "They'll have to get with the program" to meet that timetable.
He said the other two potlines should be operational by April 1.
The company announced Tuesday the planned restart of three of Warrick's five potlines by the second quarter of 2018, but was not more specific. Once the three potlines are back online, the smelter is expected to be producing at 161,400 mt/year. Alcoa plans to spend about $35 million on the restart.
The three potlines will directly serve the Warrick aluminum rolling mill, which supplies the North American market with flat-rolled aluminum for the food and beverage can packaging industry.
The smelter's molten metal will supplement purchased scrap metal and other raw materials that the Warrick site will continue to procure.
"We ship in a lot of scrap, some canned body stock scrap and other scrap, and we ship in some ingot chunks," Horn said. "They're shipping in chunks of scrap from as far away as Saudi Arabia."
Horn and the USW also are hopeful Alcoa will eventually restart the remaining two potlines at Warrick Operations, although that probably depends on market conditions.
"We went into this as a [smelter] closure, and Alcoa has come back with this plan," he said. "They said they would reopen three potlines and have changed the designation of the other two to 'curtailment' instead of a closure. We're hoping to get those back."
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. has offered the company up to $2.4 million in conditional tax credits and up to $100,000 in training grants to encourage the restart.
Following the restart, Alcoa will have about 886,000 mt of idled smelting capacity of its total smelting capacity of 3.4 million mt.
