Furukawa-Sky Aluminum to Stop Slab Procurement from Outside

Furukawa-Sky Aluminum Corporation will conclude aluminium slab procurement from outside suppliers in 2008 since its new melting and casting equipment at Fukui plant in Fukui is now in smooth operation. Aluminium casting capacity was expanded by 50% at Fukui plant with new facilities. The firm will become able to gain all aluminium slabs by in-house production next year.Furukawa-Sky Aluminum has exported aluminium slabs at approximately 50,000 tonnes per year. The firm has been suffered from large inventories to order enough slabs several months earlier than actual consumption according to the demand forecast.The firm invested 4 billion yen for introduction of an 80-tonne-class melting furnace, a 125-tonne-class holding furnace and a casting machine. The new facilities were completed in June 2007 and are in full operations now. Furukawa-Sky Aluminum became able to control inventories of aluminium slabs, half-finished castings and rolled products by the capacity expansion.The new facilities can produce aluminium slabs at maximum size with 500 millimeters of thickness, 2,250 mm of width, 10,000 mm of length and 32 tonnes of weight. The 125-tonne-class furnace is one of the largest holding furnaces in Japan. The casting capacity was expanded to 41,000 tonnes from previous 27,000 tonnes.