Brazil's national production of primary production was 137,100t in October, representing a 5% increase over the year-earlier figure.
That was equivalent to an annualised 1.614 million tpy, compared with actual production last year of 1.457 million tonnes. The country's production is still expanding but the rate of growth has started to slow in the last couple of months.
| Smelter | Oct 06 | Oct 05 | % +/- | Jan-Oct 2006 | Jan-Oct 2005 | % +/- |
| Albras | 39,100 | 38,500 | +1.6 | 382,700 | 373,500 | +2.5 |
| Novelis-Aratu | 5,000 | 4,900 | +2.0 | 48,800 | 47,300 | +3.2 |
| Novelis-Ouro Preto | 4,400 | 4,300 | +2.3 | 42,800 | 42,100 | +1.7 |
| Alumar | 37,700 | 32,400 | +16.4 | 362,400 | 314,400 | +15.3 |
| Pocos de Caldas | 8,200 | 8,200 | +0.0 | 80,000 | 79,400 | +0.8 |
| Sorocaba | 34,300 | 34,300 | +0.0 | 337,100 | 302,900 | +11.3 |
| Valesul | 8,400 | 8,000 | +5.0 | 79,600 | 79,200 | +0.5 |
| Total | 137,100 | 130,600 | +5.0 | 1,333,400 | 1,138,800 | +7.6 |
The biggest contributor to higher output last year was CBA's Sorocaba smelter, which lifted capacity from 340,000tpy to 400,000tpy from mid-2005 onwards. It hit capacity in Sept/Oct 2005 and has been running at a steady annualised 403,000tpy ever since.
The driver of higher production this year has been the 63,000tpy expansion to 438,000tpy at the joint-venture Alumar smelter, which kicked in from March onwards.
The plant is still seeing the benefits of that with 16.4% year-on-year production growth in October and 15.3% over the Jan-Oct period. Annualised production last month was 443,887t, up from 440,433t in September, although it seems unlikely that there's going to be much further upside since those figures are already some way above the new nominal plant capacity.
Going forward, further production growth is going to come again from the Sorocaba smelter, which has pencilled in another incremental hike to 470,000tpy some time next year.
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