NEO Aluminio Colombia plans to build a low carbon primary aluminum production facility in Colombia, which will be named the Green Aluminium Transformation Complex for Colombia (GALTCO). The project — which is intended to reach a capacity of 540,000 tonnes of aluminum per year — will represent the country’s first foray into aluminum smelting.
NEO Aluminio is part of the NEO Group, which manufactures aluminum vehicle wheels and electrical cables in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela for sale within and beyond South America. The company’s planned primary aluminum facility will be the heart of a new aluminum industrial cluster in South America, creating jobs and economic opportunity.
As part of the process for assessing the feasibility of building a new aluminum smelter project in South America, NEO Aluminio has signed an agreement with Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA). Under the agreement, the Colombian company would license the company’s state-of-the-art cell technology, as well as receive an array of technical services during the construction and ramp-up of the smelter.
“Finding the right technology partner is an important milestone in the development of our proposed new aluminum transformation complex,” said Carlos Santiago, CEO of NEO Aluminio Colombia. “After a global search, we have selected EGA based on the performance of their technology, the depth of their technological expertise, and their track record in some of the world’s most significant recent greenfield and brownfield production developments. Ultimately, we are proud and honored to have a partner that cares, as we do, about creating both jobs and opportunity for decades to come.”
EGA has developed aluminum smelting technology in the UAE for more than 25 years. The company has used its own technology in every smelter expansion since the 1990s and retrofitted all its older production lines. EGA’s latest technology is amongst the most efficient in the global aluminum industry.
In 2016, EGA became the first UAE industrial company to license its core process technology internationally, in a major milestone for the development of a knowledge economy in the UAE. The Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) Line 6 expansion project, built with EGA’s DX+ Ultra technology, began production in December 2018.
“Technology innovation has been an important foundation of EGA’s development and success,” noted Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, CEO of EGA. “One of our strategic priorities is to make EGA the technology partner of choice for new smelter projects, building on our success in Bahrain and strengthening technology sales as a revenue stream for our company. We look forward to growing this project with NEO Aluminio Colombia and ultimately to the successful application of EGA’s UAE-developed industrial technology in their project.”