Gulf Construction Online - Largest smelter goes onstream

Glass & Aluminium

Alba’s new potline 5 (above) ... was inaugurated last month.

Largest smelter goes onstream

01 October 2005

Aluminium Bahrain’s Line 5 expansion project was officially inaugurated by Bahrain’s Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa last month, marking the completion of the $1.7 billion expansion project that makes the country home to the largest modern smelter in the world.

To ensure that it retains the leadership position, the company is looking at commissioning a feasibility study on adding a sixth smelting line.
The fifth potline project has set new world standards on several fronts, according to Alba’s acting chief executive Ahmed Saleh Al Noaimi. It has involved the construction and subsequent commissioning of the world’s longest reduction line.
Furthermore, the construction – the largest of its kind ever witnessed in the kingdom – was completed in a record time and set new international safety standards for the world to follow, he said.
He also said that Alba employed innovative financing for the project, which has even attracted the attention of Harvard Business School scholars.
“Instead of going for the easy options, we chose diversified sources for the funding, reducing the cost of financing considerably,” said Al Noaimi.
Line 5 has increased Alba’s annual production capacity by more than 310,000 tonnes to more than 840,000 tonnes to make it the largest modern smelter in the world.
“The achievement was made all the more significant when we commissioned the reduction line in 77 days without a single injury to set a world record that was once thought impossible,” said deputy chief executive, plant operations, Mahmood Al Daylami.
Alba made history in early May as it started up the final pot in its new Potline 5, successfully ending its ‘100 Day Safe Startup’ challenge, and breaking the world record by 57 per cent for the fastest startup of an aluminium reduction line and its own target by 23 days.
Completed at the end of February, two weeks ahead of schedule, Line 5 consists of a 1.2 km reduction line as well as a new 650 MW power station, cast house, carbon plant and other facilities. The fifth potline is constructed with the Alcan-Pechiney’s AP-30 technology and Bechtel was the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractor. Line 5 will be the world’s longest AP-30 potline consisting of 336 electrolytic pots.
Despite the challenges faced by the project team in meeting the construction schedules and maintaining control of the budgets, the efficient management of the critical paths and focused approach of the team helped to commission the fifth potline two weeks ahead of the scheduled date with significant savings.
The Line 5 potline is currently the lowest cost AP 30 brown field potline built in the world, with a cost per tonne of $2,900.
The project, apart from meeting the demand from international markets, will also ensure enough supplies to the country’s downstream industries.
Asked about the setting up of new smelters in the Gulf and their impact on Alba, Al Noaimi said the world aluminium demand is growing at a rate of 4 per cent and the company competes in the global market, and at the moment there is enough demand. “However, in any industry it is the survival of the fittest and we are well-positioned to meet the challenges of tomorrow,” he said.
On the proposed sixth potline, he said the board will consider it only after a proper feasibility study is conducted. At the moment, an internal study is under way and following this a consultant will be appointed for a feasibility study.
The sixth line is expected to be cheaper to implement than the Line 5 project.

Benefits
As one of the largest construction projects in the Gulf, Line 5 has brought major added benefits to the kingdom and its economy with the creation of over 8,000 jobs during the 25-month construction phase and over 500 permanent jobs during operation. In addition, local contractors have benefited from attractive budget allocations – $520 million for the smelter alone – and exposure to the international work practices and standards implemented by Alba and Bechtel – Alba’s Line 5 engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) contractors.
Other key players in the project include Alstom and Mott MacDonald.
In terms of safety, the Line 5 proudly ranks as one of the safest projects in the global construction industry with only six Lost Time Injuries in over 28 million man hours of work and at a peak manpower rate of 8,000 people on-site, according to a company statement. Boasting a Lost Time Incident Frequency Rate (LTIFR) of 0.043* (LTIFR measures and assesses the safety performance of global construction projects by calculating the frequency of Lost Time Incidents per 200,000 man-hours of construction work. Bechtel’s global LTIFR average is 0.13 while the American construction industry’s LTIFR average is 4 ) and having won Bechtel’s ‘Environmental, Health & Safety’ Team of the Year Award, the project’s approach to safety has challenged the conventional working methods of the local construction industry. Through strict safety measures and intensive training schemes, the Line 5 has without doubt changed the mindsets of many contractors with these effects inevitably filtering down to all future projects.