In a report released at a news conference in Dushanbe, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Nematullo Hikmatullozoda, revealed on August 1 that the Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO) cut production by 32.3 percent in year-on-year terms in January-June to 49,500 tons (over the first six months last year, Tajikistan produced 73,500 tons of primary aluminum.
“Lower aluminum output is caused by reasons which are partly linked to the last year’s blackout that led to the cessation of 40 electrolysis baths and tardy delivery of petroleum coke,” the minister said.
Hikmatullozoda noted that TALCO was supposed to produce 148,000 tons of primary aluminum this year.
The Ministry of Industry and New Technologies noted in January this year that the blackout led to the cessation of 40 electrolysis baths; each of them costs 200,000 U.S. dollars. As a result of this, the company has incurred 65 million somoni losses (equivalent to 8.2 million U.S. dollars for the beginning of 2017).
Recall, nearly all of Tajikistan was hit by a blackout on October 28, 2016 following an unexpected outage at its largest power producer, the Nurek hydroelectric power plant (HPP). The power went off at about 18:30 local time and came back on three hours later.
Igor Sattarov, a spokesman for TALCO, said on October 31 that Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan’s national integrated power company) tried and failed to restore electricity deliveries to the smelter at 20:40 on October 28. “Power supply was resumed only at 21:30, but Barqi Tojik needed another one and a half hours to resume normal power supply to the smelter,” he told Asia-Plus in an interview. The utility brought delivery volumes back to the regular level at 23:18, he explained.
The Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO) is one of the ten largest aluminum smelters in the world and provides up to 70% of the country’s foreign currency earnings, consuming 40% of the country’s electrical power. TALCO is wholly owned by the Tajik government. Tajikistan does not mine alumina but imports the raw material through tolling arrangements.
Construction of the Tajik aluminum plant (TadAZ) began in 1972, and the first pouring of aluminum took place on March 31, 1975. On April 3, 2007, TadAZ was officially renamed to TALCO – Tajik Aluminum Company. The Tajik aluminum smelter had the capacity to produce 517,000 metric tons per year.
