Alcoa Expands Kawneer Aluminum Extrusion Operation

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Kawneer Company Incorporated (Norcross, Georgia), a subsidiary of Alcoa (NYSE:AA) (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), is expanding its Hernando, Mississippi aluminum window and door manufacturing plant. The company started construction on the $16 million expansion in December of 2001. Completion of the expansion, which includes the addition of anodizing and fabricating equipment, is scheduled for mid November 2002.

The expansion is part of a strategic realignment and consolidation of Alcoa's aluminum fabrication operations worldwide. Late last year, the company announced that it would cut about 6,500 jobs at 40 locations around the world and in March of this year, it closed a Kawneer fabrication plant in Jonesboro, Georgia. On June 6th Alcoa shut down its Elizabethton, Tennessee extrusion plant.

The Hernando plant seems to be immune to this trend and will actually add about 200 jobs when the expansion is complete. The Kawneer Hernando plant currently employs 325 employees. Alcoa acquired the Kawneer facilities as part of the Alumax deal in 1998.

Industrialinfo.com is tracking 654 aluminum manufacturing plants in North America. This includes primary and secondary aluminum smelters, foundries, and extruders.