Electrical Outage Affects Production at Alumar Smelter in Brazil

    PITTSBURGH--July 21, 2003--Alcoa announced today that production at its jointly-owned Alumar plant in Sao Luis, Brazil was partially affected by an electrical outage on Friday, July 18, 2003. This outage affected approximately 40% of the production (6,800 metric tons/month for Alcoa and 6,000 metric tons/month for BHP-Billiton). Work has already begun to bring production back to full capacity, and at this time, restart of the affected potline is expected to be initiated in the next 4 to 8 weeks.
    Alumar conducted an orderly take down of the affected line, significantly minimizing any material losses. Alumar's alumina production as well as the remaining aluminum production lines continue to operate normally. There were no injuries and no environmental impact.
    The Alumar smelter is jointly owned by Alcoa and BHP Billiton and has a nameplate capacity of 370,000 metric tons per year. The cause of the incident is being investigated. Alcoa's worldwide capacity for primary aluminum is 3.9 million metric tons per year.
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