metal-powder.net January/February 2014 MPR 7

Alcoa announces three-year company strategy

Bid for easier-sourced, conflict-free tungsten

Alcoa, a leading supplier of aluminium powder, has set its business targets for 2016, with plans to grow its value-add businesses and lower the cost structure of its com-modity business.

For the 2010 to 2013 period, Alcoa said that it is on track to generate an addi-tional combined US$1.8 bil-lion in revenue. The company also reported a strengthened commodity business, with lower cost positions in both alumina and aluminium.

“Alcoa’s strategy to grow our value-add businesses while lowering the cost base of our commodity business is working,” said Alcoa Chairman and CEO, Klaus Kleinfeld. “We have made significant strides to reposition the company and are announcing a clear road map to further strengthen our competitive position while driving value-add growth at historic profitability levels.”

Alcoa’s engineered prod-ucts and solutions business is on track to generate US$1 billion incremental revenue, while global rolled

products is expected to gen-erate US$800 million incre-mental value-add revenue.

Global primary products, which includes aluminium powder, has lowered its cost position in both aluminium smelting and alumina refin-ing, having now reached the 43rd percentile on the global aluminium cost curve, and 27th percentile on the global alumina cost curve. These shifts represent an 8 point movement and 3 point move-ment respectively since 2010.

For its engineered products and solutions segment the company plans US$1.2 bil-lion in incremental revenue growth by 2016 and for glo-bal rolled products, US$1.0 billion in incremental revenue growth by 2016. For global primary products Alcoa intends to improve its posi-tion on global alumina cost curve by 6 percentage points, from the 27th percentile to 21st percentile, and improve its position in global alu-minium cost curve by 5 per-centage points, from the 43rd percentile to 38th percentile.

Members of the TI-CMC can now choose to become validated as

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) conflict-free tungsten smelters.

The Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative (CFSI) and the Tungsten Industry Conflict Minerals Council (TI-CMC) have announced a joint pro-gramme to make it easier for companies to source conflict-free tungsten.

Through the new frame-work, members of the TI-CMC may now choose to become validated as Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) conflict-free tungsten smelters under the CFSI’s Conflict-Free Smelter Program (CFSP). This marks the first time the CFSI and TI-CMC can provide infor-mation about conflict-free tungsten smelters. The deadline for US reporting requirements on conflict minerals is 2014.

“Over the past five years, companies have worked hard to address conflict minerals in their sup-ply chains,” said Robert Lederer, executive director of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition. “Being able to provide companies with information about audit-validated, con-flict-free tungsten smelters

is a real success for our initiative, companies, and crucially the people on the ground who are affected by conflict in central Africa.”

“We’re very pleased to have crafted this unified approach to addressing conflict minerals issues,” said James R Dale, vice president of member and industry relations for the MPIF. “The TI-CMC sees this collaboration as an efficient and practical way for tung-sten smelters to provide confidence to their cus-tomers that their sourcing practices do not directly or indirectly support conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and adjoining countries.”

As part of the collabora-tion, TI-CMC-compliant tungsten smelters may choose to undergo the conflict-free smelter pro-gramme audit. The names of smelters compliant with the TI-CMC conflict-free tungsten programme and CFSP compliant tungsten smelters will be publicly listed on the websites of the TI-CMC and the CFSI.

Plansee opens China refractory production sitePlansee has set up a refrac-tory metal production plant near Shanghai.

“The ability to source locally is becoming an increasingly important fac-tor for our customers,” said Richard Cheung, managing director of Plansee China. “We have responded to this demand and can now offer Plansee components that have been produced locally.”

Plansee China supplies manufacturers of high-temperature furnaces and

customers from the power engineering and distribu-tion, automotive and medi-cal equipment sectors. At the Lingang industrial zone, some 40 km from Shanghai, it will produce tungsten bal-ancing weights and shield-ings, tungsten-copper and copper-chromium switch contacts for power transmis-sion and distribution equip-ment, and molybdenum and tungsten hot zones and cru-cibles for high-temperature furnaces are produced.

MPR0114_News 7 29-01-2014 10:18:08