Alpart to resume alumina production June 20
ST ELIZABETH, Jamaica — Jamaica’s largest alumina refinery Alpart, now owned by Chinese metals giant JISCO, is to resume processing of bauxite to alumina on June 20, eight years after closing down operations in 2009, company officials said today.
Patrick James, Alparts assistant managing director, told a visiting People’s National Party (PNP) team, led by party President and Leader of the Opposition Peter Phillips, that after several months of repairs and rehabilitation of the 49-year-old plant, the “target of June 20 is in full view of us”.Mining of bauxite ore on the Manchester Plateau to service the resumption of alumina refining will begin next week. Actual transporting of the bauxite down to the plant at Nain is set to begin June 8, he said.James said that since the sale of Alpart to JISCO by Russian aluminum company UC Rusal last year, hundreds had been employed. There were more than 1000 people currently employed at Alpart with more than 700 being Jamaicans, while 263 are Chinese, he said.“This activity has ramped up employment in the area (St Elizabeth and Manchester),” James said.The assistant managing director said young people, including graduates of the HEART skills training programme, were now getting on the job training. However there was a shortage of high-end engineering skills since many former Alpart employees migrated after the refinery closed in 2009.Closure of the Alpart refinery came on the heels of global financial collapse and a slump in metal prices, even as oil prices stayed high at that time.JISCO Alpart officials, including the plant’s managing director Liu Wanxiang and assistant managing director Sun Jing welcomed Phillips, former Minister of Mining, Energy and Technology Phillip Paulwell, and other PNP representatives – among them, that party’s only Member of Parliament in St Elizabeth, Evon Redman (St Elizabeth North Eastern), Mikael Phillips, MP, Manchester North Western and former MP for St Elizabeth South Eastern Richard Parchment.Len Blake, head of the Alpart Community Council and a former MP for St Elizabeth South Eastern, was among those at the meeting followed by tour of Alpart’s facilities. Garfield Myers