Aluminerie Alouette

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Aluminum smelter at Sept-Îles, Quebec, Canada, on the North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

With the successful start-up of a major expansion in 2005, the Alouette Aluminum Smelter, at 550,000 metric tonnes capacity per year, became the largest primary aluminum smelter in the Americas.

The construction of an aluminum smelter at Sept-Îles, Quebec, was made possible with the completion of the Churchill Falls Hydro Electric project in Labrador in 1972. Electrical transmission lines from Churchill Falls, carrying power to the Hydro-Québec power grid, passed close to the city of Sept-Îles and a major Hydro-Québec sub-station (the Arnaud Station) was constructed on the outskirts of the city. In 1989, attracted by Hydro-Québec's low power costs, and the excellent seaport facilities at Sept-Îles, a consortium of six companies: SGF (Canada), Kobe Aluminum (Japan), Marubeni (Japan), AMAG ( Austria), VAW (Germany) and Hoogovens (Netherlands) joined to build a 215,000 tonne per year smelter on Pointe Noire, located on the southern side of Sept-Îles Bay.

In 2002, plans were approved to expand the smelter by more than double its original capacity. This phase 2 project was completed in September 2005. The Alouette Smelter uses 800 MW electricity at maximum production capacity.

The five Alouette Shareholders are presently: Alcan (Canada 40%),AMAG (Austria Metall AG, 20%), Hydro Aluminium (Norway, 20%), SGF (Canada, 13.33%), Marubeni (Japan, 6.67%)