Multibillion-dollar bailout for major aluminium maker
Another struggling metal smelter will receive a $2 billion bailout from the federal and state governments to support manufacturing jobs.
Australia’s second-largest aluminum smelter – Rio Tinto’s Boyne aluminum smelter in the central Queensland town of Gladstone – will benefit from the cash splash.
Federal Industry Minister Tim Ayres said the investment would support 1,000 jobs at the site and another two thousand jobs around Gladstone.
In return, Rio Tinto will pour $7.5 billion into new renewable energy generation and storage projects around Queensland.
Senator Ayres said the $2 billion funding bill would be split equally between the Queensland and Federal governments.
“With significant public investment, we are accelerating a four-fold private investment that will build the renewable energy grid and protect thousands of good regional jobs in central Queensland,” he said in a statement on Wednesday morning.
Rio Tinto aluminum and lithium CEO Jérôme Pécresse said the partnership between the smelter and the two governments would allow the smelter to continue operating until at least 2040 while building Queensland’s renewable energy grid.
“As fossil fuels become increasingly expensive, this investment, combined with the power purchase agreements we have already signed, positions Boyne among the world’s first aluminum smelters powered by solar and wind energy,” he said.
The Boyne smelter has been operating in Gladstone since 1982.
It refines raw alumina produced from bauxite ore into aluminum and then pours the molten metal into ready-to-ship products.
Last year the federal government also helped save Glencore’s copper smelter in Queensland, the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia and the Nyrstar smelters in Hobart and Port Pirie.
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