Spain's government has said it will draw up legislation before year-end to help its metal industry face up to increased cost pressure from energy prices, with action expected before the end of the year.
The Industry and Ecological Transition Ministries held meetings last week with regional governments and representatives of US aluminum group Alcoa, a spokesman for the Ecological Transition Ministry told S&P Global Platts Monday.
The meetings come amid a growing wave of popular pressure for Alcoa to reverse the announced closure of two of its three Spanish plants.
During the last week, thousands of citizens of Aviles and Coruna, where the plants are located, have marched on the streets to signal their opposition to the closure, which has been largely blamed on excessive energy costs, although official industrial action has not been called yet.
In the face of this, and as a means of reaching a negotiated settlement, the Industry Ministry said it will act before year-end, in terms of "measures for high energy consuming industries -- in particular the interruptible supply auctions and compensation for CO2 costs," and will also put pressure on Alcoa to "withdraw the redundancy plan" drawn up for the nearly 700 workers directly affected.
The Alcoa spokesman said the process to negotiate a solution is around halfway through its 30-day period.
If there is no agreement in that consultation period, Alcoa would have to wait a further two weeks before formalizing the closure of the 87,000 mt/year Corunna smelter and 93,000 mt/year the Aviles smelter.
"Large energy consuming industry needs energy costs that are competitive with other locations and have visibility," the spokesman said.
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