(Adds background on Alcoa smelter cutback plans)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan 21 (Reuters) - Alcoa Inc may keep its 279,000 tonne-per-year Intalco smelter in Washington state open if power costs decline, an executive said in a presentation on Thursday.
The smelter is slated to curtail output by the end of the second quarter.
“Should the economics change, they could certainly come back,” Alcoa Casting commercial vice president Christine Keener told the Platts Aluminum Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, referring to Intalco and the 184,000 tonne-per-year Wenatchee smelter in Washington, which was curtailed last month. “We will continue to have discussions around power and cross that bridge when we get there.”
The Intalco smelter was initially slated to be curtailed by the end of the first quarter, but Alcoa on Tuesday announced a delay until the end of the second quarter due to changes in energy and raw materials costs.
The smelter is run on hydropower from the Bonneville Power Administration.
Late last year, Alcoa announced plans to close or curtail output at three of its four U.S. aluminum smelters. Should the cuts all go through, its only remaining U.S. smelter would be its 130,000 tonne-per-year Massena West smelter, which received nearly $70 million in aid from New York state to keep running.
U.S. aluminum output in 2016 is expected to be lower than at any point since at least 1950, due to cutbacks from Alcoa and rival producers Century Aluminum and Noranda as aluminum prices languish near 6-1/2 year lows. (Reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)
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