Quebec / Alcoa and Alcan postpone smelter upgrades with impacts on jobs

With an aluminum market weighed down by surpluses, Alcoa Inc. and Rio Tinto Alcan are postponing billions in upgrade and expansion plans to their smelters in Quebec.

While some 750 Rio Tinto Alcan employees will get to keep their jobs longer, 500 Alcoa workers will be pushed into early retirement.

Alcoa is deferring by three years the $1.2-billion modernization of its Baie-Comeau smelter. But the aluminum producer is still going ahead with plans to shut down two of the plant’s old potlines. The dismantling of those Soderberg potlines, which will take place over the next two years, will eliminate 500 positions, or about a third of the smelter’s 1,400-employee work force.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Alcoa and Alcan postpone Quebec smelter upgrades – The Globe and Mail.