Alcoa withdraws plans to curtail Massena West smelter

By Paul Ploumis (ScrapMonster Author)

December 01, 2015 04:28:40 AM

ALBANY (Scrap Monster): Aluminum major, Alcoa has announced its decision to continue operations at its Massena West smelter. The company is believed to have entered into an agreement with NY state authorities to revive operations at the smelter. Earlier, on November 1st, Alcoa had announced its decision to idle the Massena West smelter.

Sources indicate that NY administration has offered $68 in incentives in order to keep the Massena smelter on line. The NY State Power Authority will provide $30 million in energy subsidies. In addition, the Economic development Agency will provide close to $40 million towards capital improvements at the plant. The 3.5-year agreement now entered between Alcoa and NY State will maintain hundreds of jobs at least through March 2019.

Alcoa’s Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld thanked Senator Schumer and Governor Cuomo for their continued support. “Today’s agreement helps better position the smelter in light of prevailing market conditions, providing this facility a bridge to a stronger commodity market and maintaining jobs in the North Country”, he added.

Recently, Alcoa had decided to split itself into two separate publicly traded companies. The upstream company is to take care of the company’s business related to bauxite-mining, alumina-refining, aluminum-production, casting and energy. The upstream company is to be called Alcoa. The second entity, which will be called “value-add company”, will include global rolled products, engineered products and solutions, and transportation-and-construction businesses.