The demise of Alcoa’s Portland aluminium smelter would rob $800 million from the national gross domestic product, devastate Victoria’s southwest and threaten jobs as far away as Western Australia, according to a new report.

As federal Industry Minister Greg Hunt and his Victorian counterpart Wade Noonan flew to New York for crisis talks with Alcoa’s management, a report by the Australia Institute has forecast the loss of more than 3600 jobs if the troubled smelter shuts.

Questions about its future have become more pervasive since a power outage three weeks ago shut down its potlines during production, cooling the metal inside.

The analysis, commissioned by the Australian Workers Union and using simulation results from the National Institute for Economic and Industry Research, predicts the smelter’s closure would lead to the loss of $840m in national exports, a $192m blow to commonwealth revenues and a $50m loss to Victoria’s accounts.

Although the smelter itself supports 1500 direct and indirect jobs in the region, the report assesses job losses at more than 3600, including suppliers and downstream consumer industries. It also warns of a “potentially catastrophic” domino effect in Western Australia from the possible closure of Kwinana alumina refinery, which supplies all of Portland’s feedstock and is also owned by Alcoa.

The worst-case scenario would see close to 9000 jobs disappear and $1.75 billion lost to GDP.

AWU national secretary Daniel Walton said the loss of both factories would be a national disaster for manufacturing.

“If Portland is allowed to fail it will have a devastating impact, but there is also no guarantee the damage would end there,” he said.

“The importance of this meeting in New York to the Australian economy can barely be overstated.”

Mr Hunt and Mr Noonan are meeting today with Alcoa’s global chief executive Roy Harvey to discuss the Portland smelter’s future following the power outage. Speaking to ABC radio shortly before flying to New York, Mr Hunt said he believed the smelter had a long-term future but the current shutdown and ongoing renegotiation of Alcoa’s electricity contracts made this “a very risky time”.

“I am optimistic, but I am not giving any false guarantees,” he said.

The Turnbull government has offered Alcoa access to finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Just when we should have been making cars out of aluminium to
offer customers a choice away from heavy steel.

This country is going down hill.

Sir lastnail wrote on Dec 26^th, 2016 at 5:23pm:


The CSIRO could have helped the industry change over to all aluminium cars to make the process cheaper.

Imagine cars at half the weight - twice the acceleration -
you could also use a small engine & get 60 mpg.

But no - not here in backwards Australia - SHAME.

See what the CSIRO was working on for Holden back in 2000 and Holden stuck its nose up at it and GMC in detroit told them to keep making old rubbish and get as much money out of the tax payers they could until they went bust

https://csiropedia.csiro.au/low-emission-vehicles/

Bobby. wrote on Dec 26^th, 2016 at 5:35pm:


Fat Kim Carr kept telling us that petrol cars were the future in AUstralia

the Labor/Greens coalition deliberately pushed up power prices to run these companies out of australia..

we'll.....

its working..

thanks a lot you stupid arseholes.. 

More to do with Kennett’s privatisation of Vic’s power distribution.

Do it on the cheap, cut corners everywhere including training. Then when a mistake during maintenance cut off power to the refinery the condensers were suddenly full of aluminium that would need to be chipped out. Easier to close the refinery.

If we want industry here we need to take back control of basic infrastructure and get people to do training in the skilled manual trades.

We should also invest in nuclear power, high bloody time we did!