Alcoa, Sherwin shut Texas alumina plants pre-Ike

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Alcoa Inc. on Friday began shutting down its Point Comfort, Texas alumina refinery and Sherwin Alumina Co closed its Texas alumina refinery to prepare for Hurricane Ike's arrival, the companies said.

"They are under a mandatory evacuation and the plant has begun an orderly shutdown," Kevin Lowery, aluminum giant Alcoa's spokesman said of Point Comfort.

Privately held Sherwin Alumina Co, located north of Corpus Christi, Texas, told employees in an emergency phone message not to return to work.

"Hurricane Ike has strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane and continues on a path to the Texas Gulf Coast. The Sherwin plant completed plant shutdown procedures and released its employees at 7 a.m. Friday morning," the Sherwin message said.

Hurricane Ike remained at Category 2 strength with winds near 105 mph (168 kph). But the National Hurricane Center forecast that it would swell to Category 3 with winds over 111 mph (178 kph) and a possible 20-foot (6-meter) wall of water when it slams the northeast coast of Texas Friday or early Saturday.

Forecasters said the storm could hammer Texas with its worst pounding in nearly 50 years.

Point Comfort and Sherwin operations lie south of the storm's center, but its enormous size and growing intensity prompted both Alcoa and Sherwin to close their refineries.

Hurricane Ike spans about 900 miles with edges that could blow over Corpus Christi, Texas, near both alumina refineries.

The emergency message at Swiss-based Glencore International AG's Sherwin Alumina subsidiary said a volunteer crew remained at the plant, which will resume normal operations "as soon as it is practical after the storm has passed."

Some Sherwin employees were told to return to work on Sunday regardless of Ike's impact.

"Management is considering what is prudent for a start-up time. If the storm continues toward Galveston (north of Corpus Christi) and away from us, management may attempt to restart the plant sooner than Sunday," the phone message said.

Alcoa's Lowery said it was too early to predict how long the Point Comfort plant would remain shut and that its restart depended on the severity of the hurricane.

"We're not going to give a timetable because we don't know what the storm is going to do. When it's safe to start back up, that's what we'll do," said Lowery.

Point Comfort supplies alumina, the compound from which aluminum is made, to Alcoa's global aluminum smelter system.

The Sherwin plant has production capacity of 1.4 million tonnes of smelter grade alumina and 300,000 tonnes of chemical grade alumina hydrate per year.

The Alcoa spokesman added that the aluminum giant's Rockdale, Texas primary aluminum smelter was operating normally.

Located further inland, he said Rockdale was unlikely to feel direct impact from Ike and would continue running.

(Reporting by Carole Vaporean; Editing by David Gregorio)