Alcoa's  target  is  January  1  to  restart  the  first  of  three aluminum-making potlines at the 

company's idled Warrick Operations smelter near Yankeetown in Warrick County, Indiana, a 

United Steelworkers union official said Friday. 

"They're  looking  to  have  it in operation in five months," said Chris Horn, president of USW 

Local  104  at  Warrick  Operations.  "They'll   have  to  get  with  the  program"  to meet that 

timetable. 

He said the other two potlines should be operational by April 1. 

The company announced Tuesday the planned restart of three of Warrick's five potlines by 

the  second  quarter  of  2018,  but was not more specific. Once the three potlines are back 

online,  the  smelter  is  expected to be producing at 161,400 mt/year. Alcoa plans to spend 

about $35 million on the restart. 

The three potlines will directly serve the Warrick aluminum rolling mill, which supplies the No

rth  American  market  wit  flat-rolled  aluminum  for  the food  and  beverage can packaging 

industry. 

The  smelter's  molten  metal will supplement purchased scrap metal and other raw materials 

that the Warrick site will continue to procure. 

"We  ship  in  a lot of scrap, some canned body stock scrap and other scrap, and we ship in 

some  ingot  chunks,"  Horn  said. " They're shipping in chunks of scrap from as far away as 

Saudi Arabia." 

Horn and the USW also are hopeful Alcoa will eventually restart the remaining two potlines at 

Warrick Operations, although that probably depends on market conditions. 

"We  went  into  this  as a [smelter] closure, and Alcoa has come back with this plan," he said. 

"They  said they would reopen three potlines and have changed the designation of the other 

two to 'curtailment' instead of a closure. We're hoping to get those back." 

The  Indiana  Economic  Development  Corp.  has  offered  the company up to $2.4 million in 

conditional tax credits and up to $100,000 in training grants to encourage the restart. 

Following  the  restart,  Alcoa  will  have  about  886,000  mt  of   idled smelting capacity of its 

total smelting capacity of 3.4 million mt.