Volta Aluminum Company, known as VALCO, is an

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

company based in

Tema Tema is a city on the Bight of Benin and Atlantic coast of Ghana. It is located east of the capital city; Accra, in the region of Greater Accra, and is the capital of the Tema Metropolitan District. As of 2013, Tema is the eleventh most popul ...

Greater Accra Region The Greater Accra Region has the smallest area of Ghana's 16 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of 3,245 square kilometres. This is 1.4 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. It is the second most populated region, befor ...

founded by

Kaiser Aluminum Kaiser Aluminum Corporation is an American aluminum producer. It is a spinoff from Kaiser Aluminum and Chemicals Corporation, which came to be when common stock was offered in Permanente Metals Corporation and Permanente Metals Corporation's ...

and now wholly owned by the government of Ghana.

History

VALCO was a joint venture with

and

ALCOA Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary ...

, major aluminum conglomerates both based in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, in the British

Gold Coast colony The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from 1821 until its independence in 1957 as Ghana. The term Gold Coast is also often used to describe all of the four separate jurisdictions that were under the ad ...

in 1948. In 1961, Kaiser Aluminum & the Ghana Government invested in the

Akosombo Hydroelectric Project The Akosombo Dam, also known as the Volta Dam, is a hydroelectric dam on the Volta River in southeastern Ghana in the Akosombo gorge and part of the Volta River Authority. The construction of the dam flooded part of the Volta River Basin and led ...

to provide energy for its aluminum smelters. The company had negotiated favorable terms for power purchase with the government. The agreement was re-negotiated in 1985, by the Rawlings government, to reflect the increased value of electrical energy. In May 2003 VALCO closed completely due to problems in negotiating a supply of

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

. On August 4, 2004, Alcoa and the Government of the Republic of Ghana announced that they had finalized agreements to restart the VALCO smelter in Tema, Ghana. The plan, which included the restart 3 potlines at VALCO, representing 120,000 metric tons per year (mtpy), was to be implemented in the first quarter of 2006.]. It reopened in early 2006. In June 2008, ALCOA sold its 10% stake in VALCO to the government of Ghana.

Operations

VALCO smelts alumina to produce aluminium ingots at its

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including Silver mining#Ore processing, silver, iron-making, iron, copper extracti ...

. Locally, a major Ghanaian customer of VALCO is

Aluworks Aluworks is a manufacturing company based in Tema, Greater Accra. It was founded on February 24, 1978 and was converted to a public limited liability company on May 28, 1996. After an Initial Public Offer in October 1996, it was listed on the Gh ...

. While one motivation for establishing the plant was the local availability of bauxite, the major raw material of alumina, VALCO imported alumina to produce aluminum. The smelter has a capacity of 200,000 metric tons per year of ingots but was shut down between 2007 and 2011. In early 2011, it began reoperating at about 20% of its capacity, producing 3,000 tons per month, mostly for local consumption, with plans to activate a second potline to bring monthly production up to 6,000 tons in

References

External links

Volta Aluminum at Alcoa website
{{coord, 5, 40, 04, N, 0, 01, 16, E, region:GH_type:landmark, display=title Aluminium companies of Ghana Aluminium smelters Alcoa Kaiser Aluminum Joint ventures Manufacturing companies established in 1948 1948 establishments in Gold Coast (British colony)

History

Operations

See also

References

External links