Aughinish pre-tax profits fall by 80%

Pre-tax profits at the largest alumina refinery in Europe, RUSAL Aughinish last year decreased by 80% to $4.9m (€3.7m).

The drop in profits came in spite of revenues at Limerick Alumina Refinery Ltd and subsidiaries increasing by 23% from $496.9m to $610.5m in the 12 months to the end of December last.

The principal activity of the company is the production and sale of alumina and separate figures provided by Aughinish Alumina to the Environmental Protection Agency confirm that the output at the refinery was 1.92m tonnes of alumina hydrate representing a rise of 3% over 2010.

The plant extracts alumina from bauxite. Around 70% of the bauxite processed at the refinery comes from Guinea in Africa, with the remainder coming from Brazil. The alumina, is exported for smelting to make aluminium metal.

The pre-tax profit recorded last year follows the $24.5m pre-tax profits of 2010 — prior to that, the refinery had not recorded a pre-tax profit since 2007.

The drop in profit last year follows a lower gross margin falling from 5% to 1.4% as cost of sales rose from $471.4m to $602m.