Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), the world’s largest aluminium smelter ex-China, has announced on Monday the opening of the new jetty extension and also the additional raw materials’ storage facilities at its marine terminal.
It was inaugurated by Alba’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, Shaikh Daij bin Salman bin Daij Al Khalifa in the presence of CEO Ali Al Baqali and other senior officials at a key ceremony held in the company premises.
The event marked the successful completion of a master project that was aimed at upgrading the existing marine facility and boosting its capacity to meet Alba's increased production following the commissioning of Reduction Line 6, which boosted its overall output by more than 50%.
As part of this project, the North Jetty at Alba’s Marine was extended by 24 m to accommodate bigger ships such as 60,000 tonnes Panamax alumina vessels and also enable it to receive more than 3 million metric tonnes of alumina per annum.
The jetty has been equipped with a state-of-the-art Dual-Purpose Vacuum Ship-Unloader which will enable Alba to faster discharge its raw materials and gain additional days for routine maintenance work on site, said the statement.
In addition to the upgrades made at the jetty, a new 50,000-tonne alumina concrete storage silo was built at Alba’s Marine bringing the total alumina storage to 3 silos on-site with a total built-in capacity of 150,000 tonnes. A new Truck Loading Station has also been added on top of the existing one at the site.
Alba pointed out that the marine terminal upgrades were necessary to be on the very top, meet its additional requirements and support the business operations round-the-clock.
The Marine Jetty extension project was constructed over a period of 2.5 years on par with the highest safety standards by achieving 1.6 million safe working hours without a single loss time injury (LTI).
Speaking on the occasion, Shaikh Daij said: "Today marks an important milestone, not only for our marine terminal but also for Alba. With the seamless infrastructure of our marine operations, Alba will strengthen its competitiveness in the global Aluminium industry all the while supports Bahrain Vision 2030."
"This expansion marks our commitment to secure importing additional raw materials following the successful completion of Line 6 Expansion Project in 2019 which has made Alba the largest smelter in the world ex-China with a built-in production capacity of more than 1.5 million metric tonnes per annum.
