Producer
Alcoa Corporation
US aluminum producer; operates Pinjarra (~4.7 Mt/yr) and Wagerup (~2.7 Mt/yr) alumina refineries in Western Australia; also Huntly bauxite mine; Australian refineries feed global export market; previously operated Point Comfort refinery (Texas, closed 2016)
2
Inputs supplied
1
Goods downstream
2
Facilities
0
Stories
What they make
2 inputs Alcoa Corporation supplies
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Goods downstream
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Where they make it
2 facilities
Alcoa – Huntly Mine (Western Australia) →
AUWestern Australia
World's largest bauxite mine by production volume (~26 Mt/yr); located in Darling Range south of Perth; feeds Alcoa's Pinjarra and Wagerup alumina refineries; integrated supply chain for Alcoa's global operations
Alcoa – Pinjarra Alumina Refinery →
AUWestern Australia
World's second-largest alumina refinery (~4.7 Mt/yr); located in Pinjarra, Western Australia; uses bauxite from Huntly mine via conveyor and rail; exports to global market; 2018 worker strike contributed to alumina supply tightness during Alunorte shutdown
What else they do
Business segments
The company's full revenue map, where this supply-chain role fits within their broader business.
Bauxite Mining
15%Alumina Refining
40%Aluminum Smelting
35%Other Operations
10%
Intelligence
What's known
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Did you know2023
Alcoa's Australian alumina refineries (Pinjarra, Wagerup) process bauxite into alumina that is then exported to aluminum smelters globally -- including Chinese smelters. The same Alcoa that is a US-headquartered company subject to US export control policy exports significant alumina volumes to Chinese smelters that produce aluminum used in Chinese military aircraft, missiles, and warships. Alumina is not subject to strict export controls because it is not a finished military product, and the Hall-Héroult smelting step occurs in China. Alcoa's shareholders thus receive dividends funded in part by alumina exports that contribute to Chinese military industrial capacity -- an arrangement that neither Alcoa shareholders nor US trade policy typically flag, because the supply chain complexity obscures the connection.
Alcoa Corporation ↗Origin2023
Alcoa traces to the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, founded in 1888 by Charles Martin Hall, who had independently discovered the electrolytic process for producing aluminum (simultaneously with Paul Héroult in France) in a woodshed behind his family home in Oberlin, Ohio in 1886. Hall was 22 years old, working with equipment he built himself. The Hall-Héroult process -- an electrolytic bath of molten cryolite into which alumina dissolves and is reduced to aluminum metal -- is essentially unchanged 138 years later and is still the only commercial process for primary aluminum production. Hall's investors included the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Reduction Company became the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in 1907. Alcoa held a virtual monopoly on US aluminum production for decades until 1945, when US courts ordered it to divest assets due to antitrust concerns. In 2016 Alcoa split into two companies: Alcoa Corp (upstream) and Arconic (downstream fabricated products).
Alcoa Corporation ↗