Aluminium Venture Defended By Aluvic
The Age
Tuesday August 27, 1991
The state-owned Aluvic hit back yesterday at critics of the $310million aluminium can sheet plant it and its United States partner, Golden Aluminum, plan for Bendigo.
But Aluvic also conceded that the continuous-casting technology developed by Golden Aluminum and to be used in the plant had not yet produced commercial quantities of can sheet for the bodies of aluminium cans.
The patented technology is said to have cost advantages over existing methods and has been used at Golden Aluminum's Fort Lupton plant in Colorado since 1984.
However, Fort Lupton's output is limited to sheet for can ends and can tabs. It does not produce sheet for the body of aluminium cans, the specifications for which are exacting.
Golden Aluminum has set out to produce can sheet in commercial quantities using the process at a new plant in San Antonio, Texas. That plant is being commissioned, with first production around year's end.
Aluvic's managing director, Mr Greg Turnidge, said yesterday that the San Antonio plant would allow the technology to be proven ``over the next little while".
``Obviously as the plant is only just starting it hasn't yet got a rock-solid guarantee of acceptability," he said.
Golden Aluminum was extremely confident. ``They would not have invested that sort of money ... if they did not have the highest levels of confidence in the acceptabilty of the product," Mr Turnidge said.
``There is a time frame within which that plant will be operating and commercially proven before we will be turning sods of earth up at Bendigo." On Monday, Comalco, one of the nation's two existing can sheet producers, said it wondered how much ``blue sky" was in the Bendigo proposal. Comalco's chief executive, Mr Nick Stump, said he had yet to see a can made by the technology.
Mr Turnidge also responded to claims that the 105,000-tonne-a-year capacity of the Bendigo plant would damage the domestic market. ``It is not our intention to push somebody else out of the marketplace," he said. ``That will be up to somebody else to decide." Mr Turnidge said the Bendigo joint venture would be financed on a debt and equity arrangement that allows for a substantial amount of project financing. The financing would be based on a 10-year payback.
© 1991 The Age
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