Tag Archives: aluminum

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Romney’s Bain Capital at it again, this time it’s Alcoa vs Glencore!

Mitt Romney claims he’ll create “12 million” jobs as president of the United States, but his own creation, Bain Capital, is still hard at work destroying jobs.

This time it’s Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) Incorporated, the number three aluminum producer in the world!

Today, 01 September 2012, Alcoa began shutting down its Italian operation on the island of Sardinia, despite weeks of protests by their employees, including on camera suicide attempts.

In the U.S. state of Texas, Alcoa sold land and assets from its Rockdale operation.  Smelting has been reduced, and two production lines closed.  Alcoa has reduced the number of Rockdale employees to about 70.

Why is Alcoa shutting down operations around the world, laying off thousands of employees, when back in July 2012 it claimed it’s sales were up more than expected due to increased demand for aluminum?

But that’ just it, demand is up, but prices are down, that’s right industrial metal prices are crashing!  So how does Alcoa deal with that? “I want to make one thing crystal clear here, the market is working…..people are moving forward with curtailing [production] and responding by slower build as we see in China and that’s clearly a function of the low LME [London Metal Exchange] pricing that we currently have in the market.”-Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO Alcoa

So the wise corporate leaders, in their greed, increased production so much that there is now too much metal on the market causing prices to crash, killing their hopes for high profits.  But who gets hurt? Why the lowly employees, of course.

(The number one aluminum company Rusal, and the number two, Rio Tinto, are also cutting back on production. Small companies are in trouble, credit wise, with the Too Big to Fail Banks, so expect hundreds of thousands of aluminum industry employees around the world to become unemployed!)

Reuters has just reported that Swiss investment giant (the biggest in the world), Glencore, wants to buy Alcoa’s Sardinia mining operation.  Here’s the Bain Capital connection.  Bain Capital is considered a ‘cornerstone investor’ in the world’s biggest investment company, Glencore!

The reason why the general public is only now hearing about the world’s largest investment company, Glencore, is that it finally went public with an IPO (Initial Public Offering) in May 2011.  Other investment companies bought into Glencore, such as Aabar, BlackRock Fund, Credit Suisse, Fidelity Investment Fund, UBS, Zijin Mining and others.  The IPO was handled by Too Big to Fail Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

Here’s another trivial Romney connection to Alcoa; George Romney, Mitt’s father, worked for Alcoa as a lobbyist in the 1940s.

Alcoa is too big to be totally destroyed by vulture, I mean venture, capitalists (like Bain Capital), but it is being forced to sell off little bits of itself here and there.  And investors love it when people lose their jobs, stock prices for Alcoa Inc have been going up!  And Mitt Romney says he’ll do for America what he did with Bain Capital.

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Corporate Evil & What Economic Recovery? U.S. Alcoa to close factories worlwide, thousands of people to lose jobs. It’s all because Alcoa wants higher Aluminum prices

March 27, 2012, Sardinian workers are protesting the planned closing of Alcoa’s Portovesme aluminum smelter on the island of Sardinia.  The move could cost Italy the loss of at least 1,500 jobs.

U.S. media last reported that U.S. based Alcoa was making a deal with union workers to keep the factory open, however, European media says that ain’t so.

In fact three potential investors are now suing Alcoa.  The Italian government has been demanding Alcoa keep their factory open.  The Spanish government is also upset because Aloca has plans to reduce smelter operations there.

This is evidence that Corporate America is partly to blame for the continuing economic disaster in Europe!  But it’s not just Europeans losing their jobs, Alcoa is hitting Australians as well.

In Geelong, Australia, Alcoa says it’s closing down operations there, because it doesn’t want to pay its electricity bill!  Alcoa wants a deal from the Australian government, and utility suppliers, in order to keep its Point Henry smelter open.

Alcoa also blames the pending closing of their Australian smelter on the need for $100 million AUD (Australian Dollars) to upgrade the smelter to meet environmental regulations.  600 people could lose their jobs.

But the real reason for the closings of all these Aloca operations worldwide, is that the price of aluminum is not high enough for Alcoa executives.

Recently Alcoa officials said the recent drop in aluminum prices “…will result in a global aluminum industry deficit of 600,000 metric tons in 2012.” Why would that be?  Because the aluminum industry will cut back production until aluminum prices go back up. That means closing down factories, creating thousands more unemployed people.

Interestingly, despite aluminum prices being low, on March 1, 2012, Alcoa announced they were actually raising prices (by 5%) on some of their aluminum products!

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

China gets to open factory in United States

Days after the U.S. and China signed an agreement to promise to work together, a Chinese company announces they will spend $161 million building an aluminum plant in the U.S.

Shandong Nanshan Aluminum company will open an extrusion plant in Lafayette, Indiana.  If there are no complications with the deal, they hope to start building the plant next year.  It could employ 150 people, and produce 40,000 tons of aluminum per year.