UAE firm wins EMAL contract

The UAE’s Emirates Ship Investment Company (Eships) has won a contract to transport around 1mn tonnes of alumina annually from Australia to Emirates Aluminium (EMAL), the company said yesterday. Emal is expected to be the world’s single largest aluminium smelter complex with this project. Production from the first phase of the $5.7bn project is expected to start by the end of the year and will reach full capacity of 700,000 metric tonnes of aluminium per year (tpy) by December 2010. The three-year contract will start next year, a company statement said. Eships will transport the alumina in lots of 60,000 tonnes in modern ‘Panamax’ ships – the largest ships able to pass through the Panama Canal, it said. The ships will initially unload at Jebel Ali port.