Brazil's Companhia Brasileira de Alum?-nio (CBA) will invest 30 million Reais ($7.7 million) to increase its aluminium billet production capacity, the company's primary operations director Luis Jorge Nunes told Fastmarkets MB on Monday December 10.
The expansion will change some of the currently halted aluminium-plate furnaces into aluminium billet production units. The company's production capacity for aluminium billet will rise to 270,000 tonnes per year from 180,000 tpy today, a 50% increase.The new equipment start-up is scheduled for some time between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and will be carried out at its site in the city of Alum?-nio, 70 kilometers away from S??o Paulo, CBA said."Usually, aluminium demand in Brazil is double that of GDP growth and we forecast a 2-3% GDP rise next year," Nunes stated. "These furnaces have been halted for a long time now and the local market will need more billet than we will need plate to transform into finished...