Hawesville woes hit Century Aluminum shipments

Chicago-based smelter Century Aluminum shipped 11pc less aluminum in the third quarter compared with the prior year as the restart of its Hawesville, Kentucky, plant was hobbled by technical issues.

Century shipped 424,100t of aluminum during the quarter, down from 477,800t a year earlier.

"We had a significant alumina quality issue at Hawesville that began to cause real disruption to the cells late in the summer time," Century chief executive Michael Bless said.

Although the potline was expected to be eventually idled for maintenance as part of the restart, the outage occurred earlier than expected, Bless said.

Century has been in the process of restarting three of the plant's five potlines since March 2018, which will add 150,000 t/yr of capacity to the US market once fully ramped up. The three potlines were first idled in 2015.

The two potlines not yet running will remain down until at least the first quarter.

Revenue dropped by 7.5pc to $282mn from a year earlier on lower LME aluminum prices, but loss remained little changed at $20.7mn.

The Argus Midwest transaction price for P1020 aluminum was down by 14pc in the third quarter from the same period a year earlier.

Mt. Holly developments

The half-idled Mt. Holly smelter in Goose Creek, South Carolina, could benefit in the long term from a referendum in December on whether the city should form its own municipal electrical company, Bless said.

The smelter remains only half running because of an ongoing dispute between Century and state-owned utility provider Santee Cooper. Century has repeatedly asked the company for permission to buy 100pc of its electricity for the plant from a less-expensive, third party and transmit it on Santee Cooper's power lines.

But the earliest Century would be able to buy 100pc of its power from a different provider, should the motion pass, would be January 2021, Bless said.