Romanian aluminium smelter Alro said on Tuesday it is continuing its USD 61 million (53 million euro) investment programme this year, focusing on extending client portfolio, enhancing the hot rolled products quality and reducing energy dependency, the company said in a statement filed with the Bucharest Stock Exchange, BSE.

The optimisation of the products mix and the quality increase, along with the overall efficiency increase will support Alro’s goals to boost its market share. „We continue to implement our complex investment strategy which covers three major areas: products quality and production mix with a focus on sophisticated markets, operational efficiency and cost control, as well as increasing the market share,” Alro board chairman Marian Nastase said.

In the processed aluminium segment, Alro is modernising the cold rolling mill no. 2, and the grinding machine, in order to increase the production of flat rolled aluminium products to 120,000 tonnes per year by 2022 from 90,000 tonnes per year at the end of 2017. Also, it will increase the heat-treated plates production share, in line with the market demand.

At the same time, the company intends to implement a profile control system for hot rolled products, with the main objective to improve these products quality. Moreover, in order to increase competitiveness, Alro is focusing on optimizing the delivery terms for the hot-rolled products and on monitoring and controlling the entire production planning system in a centralized manner by implementing a production planning system for the Processed Aluminium Division.

In terms of cost efficiency,  Alro aims at developing the Eco Recycling programme, by optimizing and increasing the scrap processing capacity through the implementation of a scrap processing line from shredding up to melting, with the purpose of reaching a capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year by 2020 (from 32,000 tonnes per year at the end of 2017), and increasing the energy efficiency of the existing processes.