Alro thinks of shutting down some of key primary aluminum production facilities

The company is forced to prepare a plan to shut down a predominant part of key primary aluminum production facilities, thus drastically reducing the electricity consumption, with these measures involving a significant reduction of the Alro workforce thus they would be preliminary discussed with the social partners, a company release mentions.

The decision comes after because the board of directors no longer supports the 2014 income and expenses budget, as previously proposed for the approval of the general shareholders, due to the newly increased quota for green certificates. The board meeting will take place tomorrow in oder to discuss the issue.

For the 2014 budget, the board assumed a reduction of the cogeneration bonus together with a decrease of the green certificates burden. However, on February 26th, 2014, the quota for green certificates increased to 0.224 GC/MWh, as per Order 12/2014 signed by the National Authority for Energy Regulation (ANRE). This quota must be paid by all energy consumers as part of the subsidy scheme to support renewable energy production in Romania.

Also, all the signals from the market shows that the speculative bubble of the subsidy for renewables will continue even more aggressively.

The increase of the eco-taxes was determined by the commissioning of new photovoltaic (a 2000 per cent increase in capacities over the last year) and wind generation capacities installed by the end of 2013. The principal factors with significant impact are the lack of predictability of the application of the subsidy scheme for renewable energy as well as a significant fall of the aluminium quotations on the international market.

Under the new circumstances, Alro will have to pay for eco taxes a further RON 20 million, only for 2013 regularization and the impact in the budget 2014 is estimated to exceed the current forecasts of the Company with at least 80 million RON, the company release notes.

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