ALUMINUM: Alcoa in Alaska

“This,” said Alaska’s Governor Ernest Gruening last week, “is the most important event in Alaska’s history since its purchase from Russia.” The event: Aluminum Co. of America’s announcement of plans for a giant aluminum smelter and two power plants near Skagway on the Canadian border. The cost, $400 million, would make the project the second biggest single investment ever made at one site by U.S. private industry.† It would eventually boost Alcoa’s aluminum capacity 60% to 2.1 billion pounds annually, provide year-round employment for 4,000 and create a new Alaskan city of 20,000.

Alcoa’s plan is to dam the Yukon River deep in Yukon Territory, thus raise the level of several lakes near the border. Alcoa would then tunnel 21 miles through mountains and under the fabled Chilkoot Pass to bring the water down through penstocks to the turbines. The generators would be in the rock itself, protected from the weather and enemy bombs. The power would be cheap enough (probably 2¢ per Ib. of aluminum v. 4$ at Alcoa’s most recent U.S. facilities) to offset the cost of transporting alumina all the way north and finished aluminum to market. Alcoa is ready to raise the whole $400 million unaided, provided that 1) Canada will give permission to dam the river and divert the water, and 2) the U.S. will help Alcoa get title to the 20,000 acres of Alaskan land needed for the site (present homesteading laws limit one Alaskan purchase to 160 acres). The plan has already won the informal backing of the U.S. Defense Department. Moreover, Alcoa, a onetime monopoly which now has plenty of competition and only 50% of total U.S. capacity, doesn’t think trustbusters could legally block the project.

Into a new wing of Alcoa’s Lafayette, Ind. plant last week rolled a 107-ton steel casting made in Germany. The huge casting is actually only a single pact of a still bigger machine: a giant extrusion press 2½ times more powerful than any of its type in the U.S. When it is put together, the press will be capable of horizontally ramming a heated aluminum billet into a stationary die with a force of 13,200 tons (equal to the weight of 156 loaded coal cars). The new press will cut production time in half for some types of aircraft wing panels and body parts.

†Biggest: U.S. Steel’s new $421 million Fairless Works near Morrisville, Pa.