Alcoa

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This article is about Alcoa, the aluminum manufacturing company. For other uses, see Alcoa (disambiguation).

Alcoa (Template:Nyse) is the world’s leading producer of alumina, primary and fabricated aluminium, with operations in 43 countries. (It is followed in this by a former subsidiary, Alcan, the second-leading producer.) In addition to aluminium products, Alcoa also makes and markets consumer brands including Reynolds Wrap foil and plastic wrap, Baco household wraps, and Alcoa wheels. Among Alcoa’s other businesses are vinyl siding, closures, fastening systems, precision castings, and electrical distribution systems for vehicles.

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History

In 1886, Charles Martin Hall, a graduate of Ohio’s Oberlin College, discovered the process of smelting aluminium, almost simultaneously with Paul Héroult in France. He realized that by passing an electrical current through a bath of cryolite and aluminium oxide, the then semi-rare metal aluminium remained as a byproduct. This discovery, now called the Hall-Héroult process, is still used 117 years later by Alcoa to produce aluminium. With the help of financial backers, Hall started the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which changed its name to Aluminum Company of America in 1907. The acronym "Alcoa" was coined in 1910, given as a name to two of the locales where major corporate facilities were located (although one of these has since been changed), and in 1999 was adopted as the official corporate name.

Until 1950, Alcoa was concerned with its domestic market, while its Canadian subsidiary Aluminum Limited (Alcan) took care of the international markets. From 1937 to 1957 it was under sticter than normal governmental supervsion, pending a final verdict in the U.S. vs Alcoa antitrust case. Alcoa's monopoly was effectively ended by the disposal of Defense Corporation Plants after WWII by the War Assets Administration. This enabled Reynolds Metals Company and Kaiser Chemicals to become fully integrated producers of primary aluminum. They were soon joined by Anaconda Aluminum Company, a subsidiary of the copper-industry giant. In 1958 Harvey Machine Tools Company began primary aluminum production, marking the end of Alcoa's monopoly over the process which had led to its domination American market.

The judge in U.S. vs Alcoa remarked, "It was not inevitable that it should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened, and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization, having the advantage of experience, trade connections and the elite of personnel." Some economists have criticized the judgement of monopoly against Alcoa. For example, Alan Greenspan said: "ALCOA is being condemned for being too successful, too efficient, and too good a competitor. Whatever damage the antitrust laws may have done to our economy, whatever distortions of the structure of the nation's capital they may have created, these are less disastrous than the fact that the effective purpose, the hidden intent, and the actual practice of the antitrust laws in the United States have led to the condemnation of the productive and efficient members of our society because they are productive and efficient." Greenspan grants that Alcoa was a monopoly, but maintains that it was not a coercive monopoly and, hence, should not have been subject to anti-trust action. (Antitrust by Alan Greenspan)

Alcoa has established an 8% stake in China’s state-run aluminium industry and has formed a strategic alliance with Aluminium Corporation of China (Chalco), China’s largest aluminum producer, at its Pingguo facility.

Alcoa has also acquired two facilities in the Russian Federation, at Samara and Belaya Kalitva. Alcoa recently launched an offer to purchase the remaining 18% of the Belaya Kalitva plant from minority shareholders, giving it complete ownership in the facility.

In 2005, Alcoa began construction in Iceland on Alcoa Fjardaal, a state-of-the-art aluminium smelter and the company’s first greenfield smelter in more than 20 years. Alcoa also signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to build a low-emissions aluminium smelter and related facilities there, and is working with the government of Ghana on the development of the aluminum industry in that country. Furthermore, Alcoa has completed or is undergoing primary aluminium expansion projects in Brazil, Jamaica, and Pinjarra, Western Australia. It has changed its home office from Pittsburgh to New York.

Alcoa was named one of the top three most sustainable corporations in the world at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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