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PrintMONTREAL - As many as 60 Rio Tinto Alcan employees in Alma, Que., have been forced into early vacations or temporary layoffs as the metal giant tries to fix a problem with the formulation of produced aluminum.
The aluminum made at the smelter in Saguenay Lac St. Jean region contains higher than normal levels of iron and silicon.
Equipment that's normally used to maintain and re-line aluminum pots has been diverted to fixing the problem, forcing the shutdown of the re-lining department for more than two weeks.
"They've pooled all the resources available to them at the plant, including some equipment from the pot re-lining centre, to try to fix the situation with the metal," spokesman Bryan Tucker said in an interview Monday.
The quantity of aluminum production in Alma hasn't been affected.
However, the aluminium from Alma is being mixed with product from nearby smelters to produce metal that meets customer specifications.
Tucker said the problem surfaced during a normal monitoring of the produced metal.
Neither the cause nor the remediation cost been determined.
"It's an exceptional situation," he added.
About 60 employees work in the pot re-lining centre, which has been closed. It wasn't immediately clear how many of those workers face layoff.
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