Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) said last week that the nameplate capacity of its Reduction Line 6 recently rose by 20 thousand metric tons per annum to 560 thousand metric tons per annum thanks to an 18-kA bump in electrical current to the line.

The line entered production at the end of 2018 and was slowly ramped up in 2019. The latest capacity increase came due to scaling up the electrical current provided to the line from 460 kA to 478 kA.

Alba’s Chairman of the Board Shaikh Daij bin Salman bin Daij Al Khalifa described the importance of the milestone in a related press release.

“We have gone bigger with expanding Line 6 nameplate production capacity for the better. This new milestone is important for Alba, now and in the future as we continue to strive to improve our operational productivity and efficiency while keeping Alba on track to rank as the largest smelter in the world ex-China.”

“I would like to applaud our teams for creeping-up safely our Line 6 assets in the last couple of months to expand its throughput all the while optimizing our fixed cost structure,” he continued.

“Witnessing Line 6 success and its contributions to Alba’s operational and financial performance since 2019, we are now keen more than ever to move forward with Line 7 smelter.”

The production rise brings Alba’s overall nameplate capacity to over 1.6 million metric tons per annum.

Alba is one of the largest industrial companies in the Middle East and is the world’s biggest aluminium smelter outside the People’s Republic of China. Originally incorporated in 1968, the company is based in Bahrain and 84% of its total workforce are Bahraini nationals. It began operations in 1971 with a 120,000 metric ton annual capacity. Modernization bumped the output up to 450,000 metric tons in 1992. In the spring of 2005, Alba opened Line 5, raising output by 860,000 metric tons per year. In 2022 Alba’s smelter produced 1,600,111 metric tons of primary aluminium.