Alcoa’s breathing space

The alumina facility, a provides much needed employment for the inhabitants of the island of Sao Luis in Brazil’s remote north east area, analysts say. The company has been operating there for about 25 years. Palacio was speaking through translator Danielle Costa da Chagas during a recent tour if the Alcoa’s facilities in Brazil.

“Nowadays, in Sao Luis, we see an improvement in the economy,” he said. “The people now see that Alumar is not an environmental danger, and Alumar has become a friend of the city.”

Alumar pays taxes both to the Maranhao State and Municipal Governments and to the Brazilian Federal Government, to the tune of R$139M annually.

The mayor added that if Alumar wasn’t operating in Sao Luis, then the city’s and the residents living standards wouldn’t be improving.

“The city is not aware of any environmental offences but what the mayor is saying is that the city’s administration trust Alumar and the corporation is worried about the ecology,” the translator said.

The Alumar aluminum producing industrial complex in Sao Luis, Maranhao, Brazil, seems to be a huge, impressive and efficiently- run commerical enterprise. Sao Luis is a fairly small, rural city in the north eastern region of Brazil which struggles to deal with grinding poverty.

The Alumar industrial complex comprises of a smelter, refinery, port and environmental park, occupying 5,300 hectares.

The mayor, through the translator said, “Alumar is not a company that works just to make money.”

When asked if there are any sort of health risks afflicting the city’s residents since Alumar’s establishment, he said every company has its own problems.

“And Alumar is no different, but in face of the risks that it can bring to Sao Luis, the benefits are greater than the risks,” he added.

He said during his five years in office, he hasn’t had any kind of problems with Alumar.

“I think the company creates a lot of jobs,” he said, “and it gives us the opportunity to have an aluminium industry as well sponsoring a lot of cultural activities but sometimes, people says that it pollutes. However, we don’t know whether it pollutes or not.”

He noted that it’s never been proven that Alumar is an environmental polluter and didn’t know of any acts of pollution occurring in the region. He said he wasn’t aware of Alcoa being heavily fined in the courts of the USA and Australia for ecological offences.

“But, I’ve translated a lot of documents in which they seem to be very strict with regulations but the way things go over there, as to whether they pollute or not, I don’t know.”

“I’m almost sure that the environmental controls from the Brazilian government must be stricter and they don’t have staff to measure and enforce the country’s environmental laws,” he said.

On whether Alumar could be flouting Brazil’s ecological laws and the Brazilian Ministry for the environment not knowing about it, he said that was a possibility.

But he said he was aware of health risks affecting Sao Luis’ population since the Alumar industrial smelter complex came on stream.

“What I know is that it was established based on political interests,” he said, adding “most of our lands was sold to Americans but we don’t know the details.” The mayor noted though that there’s a lot of crime in the poor areas of Sao Luis, which are mostly located out of town.

One such crime were illegal land seizures by poor people who couldn’t afford to buy their own homes.

“So, in order to become land owners, they have to invade the lands because of the number of people here and the poverty existing here and they don’t have jobs, there’s a lot of crime,” he said.

He said most of the area’s inhabitants work for the State of Maranhao or for the Sao Luis City Hall. “It’s not easy for people to find employment here because we don’t have a lot of companies and the situation in the country is not so easy,” he said. Brazil’s economy is still weak, he added.

According to the director of Alumar, Nilson Ferraz, the corporation’s management knows what’s at stake. Ferraz himself has been at Alumar for at least 15 years and started off as a smelter engineer and moved up.

He was part of the briefing held last month at the Sao Luis Park Hotel for the journalists visiting the Alumar industrial complex.

He said the educational levels of employees at Alumar range from elementary (Alumar’s technical administration office — 1%, smelter-2%) high school (Alumar technical administration office- 86%, smelter- 90%) and college (Alumar technical administration office -13%, smelter-8%.)

“Alumar tries to encourage our employees to educate themselves further because knowledge if important, not only for themselves but for the corporation,” he said.

The smelter’s primary aluminium production is 370 thousand tonnes per year, the refinery current alumina production is 1.3 million tonnes per year and the port has handled approximately 4,200,000 tonnes per year. Bauxite production is 2,947,000 tonnes per year and caustic soda production is 130,000 tonnes per year.

Built in the Coquieros Strait on the Cachorros River, the massive Alumar port can berth large vessel ships for up to 50,000 tonnes. This port handles the unloading of raw materials such as bauxite, pitch, coke, coal caustic soda and alumina production surplus.

The $1.7 billion industrial complex was established in August 1984.

As a result of the plant’s excellence in processing and modernisation practices, it has been certified by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) 9002 ISO 14001 and Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 for environmental sustainable management, safety and occupational health system, respectively.

For eight consecutive years, Alumar has been accredited by the Brazilian Accident Prevention Association (ABPA.)

The total number of employees at Alumar is 1,868 with 1,230 working at the smelter. Approximately 8,000 people live around Alumar’s industrial smelter in the park.

Electrical power, according to Alumar documents, costs R$378 million, raw materials cost R$520 million and local suppliers are R$180 million. The Bayer process is used to extract alumina from the bauxite in the refinery plant, a process, some argue, is the most economical method of manufacturing alumina.