Alro’s consumption stood at less than 2.9 TWh last year, according to ZF’s calculations based on the latest report of the energy market regulator ANRE and the information supplied by the company. Consumption was almost flat compared with 2013, and about 25% lower than in 2008.
Alro is its own electricity supplier and has a license that allows it to operate on the competitive electricity market directly. It accounted for 17% of this segment in 2008, beating electricity suppliers such as Electrica.
Last year’s ANRE data show Alro accounted for less than 7% of the competitive segment, a segment where 29.2 TWh of power were sold, which means Alro used its license to buy only 2 TWh. The rest up to 3 TWh came from a different supplier, but the company did not say who that was. Most of the power Alro uses comes from Hidroelectrica, under a bilateral contract. A report published by Electrica shows that Alro became a customer early this year. The document does not specify how much power Alro will buy, though.
The 25% decline in power consumption at Alro in 2008-2014 was not accompanied by a similar decline in production. According to the corporate website, production of primary aluminum stood at about 288,000 tons in 2008, went down to 201,000 tons in 2009 and then recovered gradually to about 263,000 tons last year. This means production actually went down by less than 10% in 2008-2014.
According to the latest data published in the first half last year, Alro invested more than $100 million in environment protection projects in the past decade, which enabled it to cut power consumption on various production segments by 6% to 95%.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)