Boyne Island aluminium smelter

The Boyne Island Aluminium Smelter is located on Boyne Island, Queensland, Australia, approximately 12 km south of the port of Gladstone. The smelter has a production capacity of 545,000 tonnes of aluminium per year. The operating company Boyne Smelters Ltd is 59.4% owned by Rio Tinto Alcan with the balance held by a consortium of Japanese participants including Sumitomo, Marubeni, Mitsubishi and YKK Group. 2011 saw the construction of a new carbon bake furnace to replace the original bake furnace.HistoryConstruction of the smelter commenced in 1979 and the plant was officially opened in 1982. The concept of an aluminium industry in the state of Queensland, Australia began in 1957 when the Queensland Government and Comalco’s predecessor signed an agreement giving the company the right to develop a large bauxite deposit discovered two years earlier at Weipa on the remote far North West coast of Cape York Peninsula by the company.The agreement required Comalco to accept a number of obligations, including establishing a plant in Queensland to refine bauxite to alumina and to investigate building an aluminium smelter to smelt alumina to aluminium. The first obligation was fulfilled in 1967 when a consortium by the company commenced operation of the Queensland Alumina Ltd. Gladstone refinery.