Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden has signed a deal with Canadian aluminium giant Alcan that will see the development of a $7 billion integrated aluminium production facility in Minerals Industrial City at Ras Az Zawr, on the east coast of Saudi Arabia.
The facility will house a 1,400 megawatt power generator, a 720,000 ton aluminium smelter and a 1.6 million ton alumina refinery. It will be fed by the Az Zabirah bauxite mine, which is reported to offer a reserve of 90 million tons.
A new $2.8 billion railway line is being constructed to link Az Zabirah to Ras Az Zawr and other northern Saudi Arabian industrial towns.
The Ma’aden plant will be one of the largest in the world and will feed a insatiable appetite for aluminium in the region.By the end of this decade, aluminium consumption in the GCC is expected to top five million tons per year, according to industry experts.
Ma’aden will own the other 51 percent of the project and Alcan will provide technology and operational support. Ma’aden is a Saudi Arabian joint stock company formed in March 1997 and wholly owned by the Saudi Government.
The next step in the project is completion of the joint venture agreement and preparation of financing, Alcan said. Alcan says it expects the first metal to be poured in the first quarter of 2011, with the first alumina produced a year later.
Alumina is refined from bauxite and is the input, along with massive amounts of power, in making aluminum. Alcan Chief Executive Dick Evans said the project has “an ideal combination of competitive energy resources, local bauxite, well-developed infrastructure and favourable logistics.”
“Consistent with Alcan’s primary metal strategy, this project has the potential to achieve one of the lowest operating costs in the industry and become one of the world’s largest smelters,” he added in a statement.
Ma’aden is not the only regional company cashing in on the Middle East’s cost-effective access to energy and bauxite. In February, Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) announced it is building a $8 billion plant that will be fully operational in 2013.
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