250 jobs to go in the hunter valley smelters, page-15

wonder what the Carbon tax and Mining tax will do to this industry ?



Alcoa Plans to Curtail Smelters in Italy and Spain as part of Global Primary Restructuring

The restructuring will reduce the Company’s global smelting capacity by 12 percent or 531,000 metric tons.
Operations at Alcoa’s Portovesme, Italy, as well as La Coruña and Avilés, Spain, smelters are designated for curtailment, with the intended actions to be completed in the first half of 2012. The facilities are among the highest-cost producers in the Alcoa system. Last week, Alcoa announced the permanent closure of the Company’s smelter in Alcoa, Tennessee, and two potlines at its Rockdale, Texas, smelter.

The curtailments will contribute to Alcoa’s long-term goal of improving its position on the world aluminum production cost curve by 10 percentage points. This action will also increase Alcoa’s competitiveness in the current volatile aluminum marketplace. Aluminum prices have fallen more than 27 percent from their peak in 2011.


In addition to the closures and curtailments, Alcoa will aggressively accelerate actions to reduce the cost of raw materials used by its Primary Products business and will adjust capacity across the Company’s global refining system to reflect internal demand as well as prevailing market conditions.

I refer to the Mining Tax if ALCOA deem it more profitable to mine Bauxite elsewere in order to reduce costs.

Factors such as the strong $A, costs of production( wages, labor regulations, etc), price of energy, and to this we add the MINING TAX, and the iceing on the cake CARBON TAX.

It seems that the Australia is being Punished for it decades of success.

We have put into power leaders that have lost touch with reallity, who live in the illusion of power at any cost, hide the truth taint and twist theories, hypothesis to hold onto power.

Once the industry goes it is almost impossible to bring back as it take billions to rebuild and foreign goverments will spend the equivalent to keep.

All it comes down to is the INCOMPETENT GILBRO goverment.

The time for change is comming.

The Australian voter will rise and purge the the hierarchy
of incompetent goverment.

The Australian digger will role up its sleeves and dig Australia out of the debt hole we find ourselves in.

The Australian people will demand and put in place a goverment that will put Australia first, not an ideaology based on fallacies and twisted hypothesis.

"In the end only the action the goverment determines the reaction of the voter" .

Speak up let your local member know.