Century Aluminum, an American aluminum producer, said on Thursday that maintenance work will enable the shutdown plant in Iceland's Grundartangi to resume production by the end of April, about six months earlier than previously indicated.
This smelter with an annual production capacity of 320,000 tons was forced to reduce its output by two-thirds due to an electrical equipment failure in late October. This has driven up the European aluminum premium, which is currently at a one-year high of $356 per ton.
Century Aluminum stated in November that the manufacturing, transportation and installation of the transformers would take 11 to 12 months.
Jesse Gary, the CEO of Century Aluminum, stated at the fourth-quarter earnings conference call, "The good news here is that we now expect to be able to repair some of the damaged transformers and start restarting the second line by the end of April, approximately six months earlier than initially anticipated."
"We still plan to install the new transformer after its replacement is completed, but we believe that the repaired transformer will enable us to bring the production line back to a nearly full-production state during this period," Gary said, adding that the smelter will return to nearly full production by the end of July.
Gary stated that due to the high demand for transformers in data centers, the replacement equipment is expected to arrive only in the fourth quarter.
Century Aluminum is collaborating with the UAE-based Global Aluminum Company to build the first new aluminum smelter in the United States in Oklahoma since 1980. This month, the company sold its idle Hawesville smelter in Kentucky to the data center operator TeraWulf.
Due to the production halt in Iceland, Century Aluminum's aluminum output in the fourth quarter decreased by 14% compared to the third quarter. The company expects its annual output to decline by only 2.6% in 2026, reaching 630,000 tons. The Mt. Holly project in South Carolina will restart with a capacity of 50,000 tons in April, and the output will increase accordingly.
