Kaiser Aluminum plant in Chalmette closure

Per the article, "'The current curtailment is just for inventory control purposes,' Nelson said. 'When the market for aluminum and our inventories are in better shape, we expect that capacity around our system will be restarted."

Primary Aluminum is struggling right now. When Magnitude 7 Metals shut down their Marston, Missouri smelter in January, the US lost 30% of it's primary capacity.

People focus so much on US oil production...but we need to keep our eyes on aluminum. In 2012, US Primary Aluminum Production was over 2 Million Metric Tons. In 2023, it was 750,000 Metric Tons.

With a dix pack of Sixie?

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Did it really close because of the lack of natural gas reserves?

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No. In fact, if anything, the opposite: Kaiser had a long-term natural gas supply contract where they were getting all the fuel they needed at low cost. (And they used a lot of fuel. Reducing alumina--aluminum oxide, Al2O3--to pure aluminum takes a lot of electricity, the generation of which takes a lot of fuel.)

Labor costs had gone sky-high, environmental issues increasingly were a problem for the process the plant used, and the aluminum market has substantial ups and downs.

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last aluminum plant left in the US

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Isnt there 2 just in La?

LA Alumina in Burnside and Atalco in Gramercy

I started work at Kaiser in West Virginia in 1981. Graduated on Saturday and started work on Monday. The eighties were awful times for everyone and companies were hit really hard. I was there just over a year and the workforce was cut in half by the time I was released. Our pot lines were idled but the fabrication side continued to operate at a reduced level. In the reorganization that had to happen, my department got a new boss that was transferred from Chalmette. Max was a big, bald, no nonsense ex-marine and one of the nicest men I ever met. He brought me back a couple of years later and I retired from there after 37 years, but not under Kaiser. Kaiser was a great place to work but terribly mismanaged.

We’re in a soft economic recession. People do not have disposable income right now and aren’t buying as many unnecessary items that require aluminum, like canned soft drinks, new automobiles, etc.

I moved over to the Tenneco Chalmette refinery.

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LA Alumina in Burnside and Atalco in Gramercy

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Burnside
Closed down a few years ago.
Last remaining one in atalco.

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We’re in a soft economic recession. People do not have disposable income right now and aren’t buying as many unnecessary items that require aluminum, like canned soft drinks, new automobiles, etc.

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We might be in a recession but I still see people buying a lot of expensive shite

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wonder where they get their bauxite from

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It's on the Ohio River so I guess they barge it in.