One of the four production lines at Hydro’s partly owned aluminum plant Albras in Brazil was shut down on Saturday morning, local time, due to an internal power distribution fault. The company announces this in a stock exchange announcement on Saturday.
The power outage occurred in an electrolysis line at Albras, which led to a shutdown of the affected line. The affected line produces 110,000 tonnes of liquid aluminum annually.
The other three lines on Albras are not affected and run as normal, it is stated.
“It is too early to assess the financial consequences of the incident, as well as the time to start the line up again,” the company writes in the report.
Not the first time
This is also not the first time Hydro has experienced problems at the Albras plant. As recently as early March 2020, Hydro had to shut down 25 percent of the plant’s capacity as a result of a power outage.
Then there was a fire in an electric transformer which meant that the company had to shut down one of the four production lines at the plant. On 27 May 2020, Hydro announced that the production line was back in operation after the power outage.
Information director Halvor Molland at Hydro says it is too early to speculate on the duration of the shutdown.
– The reason why the line had to close now was of a different type than what it was last time, so there are some things we have to look at. The financial effects are affected by how long it can take before you can start up the line again, at the same time as it is something we have to look at in relation to the actual events, he says.
Albras has a total production capacity of 460,000 tonnes annually. Hydro owns 51 percent of Albras, while the remaining 49 percent is owned by Nippon Amazon Aluminum Co. Ltd. Albras is located in the town of Barcarena in the Pará region of northern Brazil, next to Hydro’s Alunorte alumina refinery.
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