Alcan to double size of Coega smelter

ED RICHARDSON ALCAN HAS decided to double the capacity of a planned smelter at Coega, according to reports from Canada. The 460 000 ton a year smelter project, which Alcan took over as part of its purchase of French group Pechiney, has been scaled up to between 800 000 or 900 000 tons a year to make it viable, according to an interview conducted in Toronto, Canada with Travis Engen, chief executive of the Canadian company Alcan. If Alcan goes ahead with the project, it will be the biggest industrial investment in South Africa since the end of apartheid. The decision to go ahead with constructing an aluminium smelter at the Coega Industrial Zone should be clearer at the end of 2005, according to Engen.