Finally someone somewhere is investing in new metal units. But don’t get your hopes up.

Rio Tinto has announced that it will spend $14.8 million on improvements to its Alma smelter. This smelter, in Quebec province in Canada, is currently rated at 440,000t, and the investment will lift this by 12,000t. So in reality this is nothing more than “capacity creep”, created by tweaking the amps. The plant is of course a Pechiney design, with AP30 cells.

Alma has had a chequered history recently. The plant was at the centre of a union dispute that saw the company cut one third of production at the height of the dispute. It was also the centre of a study launched a few years ago to examine if it could be expanded to 570,000t, though nothing ever came of that study.

Alma gets its name from the town in the Lac St Jean district in northern Quebec where it is located. (Hat tip to Gordon, who corrected my original comment that it was in La Terriere.)