UC RUSAL raised $2.2 billion in January when it became the first non-Asian company to list in Hong Kong. The company plans to boost aluminium output by 3 percent this year as the market improves after a slump that prompted it to cut output in 2009.
UC RUSAL produced about 3.9 million tonnes of aluminium last year, or approximately 10 percent of the world's production.
It has capacity to produce 4.6 million tonnes a year of the metal used in packaging, construction and cars and brought 100,000 tonnes of idle capacity on stream in the first quarter.
THREE-PRONGED APPROACH
The new Potline 5 at the Irkutsk smelter, located close to Lake Baikal, has design capacity of 166,000 tonnes and UC RUSAL said in a statement it would produce 156,700 tonnes in 2010.
The smelter can now disconnect its least effective potline, UC RUSAL said in the statement. Potline 2 has capacity of 42,000 tonnes a year and was closed during the economic crisis while work was carried out in parallel on the new potline.
"The greater part of our aluminium smelters was built between 40 and 60 years ago. That's why modernising aluminium production sites in Russia is crucial for us," Alexei Arnautov, head of UC RUSAL's aluminium division, said in the statement.
He said UC RUSAL was adopting a "three-pronged approach" to modernise its smelters: making existing smelters more environmentally friendly, building new smelters such as those at Taishet and Boguchany, and replacing obsolete capacity with new.
"Potline 5 is a very illustrative example of implementing the latter approach," Arnautov said.
UC RUSAL said the commissioning of Potline 5 at the Irkutsk smelter had created 585 new jobs. The smelting process is based on pre-baked anode technology. (Writing by Robin Paxton; editing by James Jukwey)
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