Alcoa
Alcoa Corporation, founded in 1888, is a prominent American engineering company recognized for its role as a leading manufacturer of lightweight metals, particularly aluminum. With its headquarters in New York City, Alcoa's production revolves around three key products: bauxite, alumina, and aluminum, which are utilized across a variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, construction, and packaging. The company has a global presence, operating in several countries such as Australia, Brazil, and Norway, and employs approximately 13,100 people.
Historically, Alcoa stemmed from the innovative Hall-Héroult process developed by Charles Martin Hall, which revolutionized aluminum production. Over the years, it has contributed significantly to major construction projects, including the iconic Empire State Building and the World Trade Center, showcasing aluminum's versatility. In recent years, Alcoa has focused on sustainable practices, introducing eco-friendly technologies in its operations and making strides in responsible mining.
Despite facing challenges, including legal issues and market changes, Alcoa has maintained robust revenues, reaching up to $12.45 billion in 2022. The company continues to be an important player in the aluminum industry, known for pioneering developments and innovations, such as the first aluminum-sheathed skyscraper and lightweight materials for the aerospace sector.
Alcoa
- Date Founded: 1888
- Industry: Aluminum
- Corporate Headquarters: New York, New York
- Type: Public
Alcoa Corporation, incorporated on October 1, 1888, is an American engineering company best known as a manufacturer of lightweight metals. The company’s operations are organized around the production of three main products: bauxite, alumina, and aluminum (the company's current name derives from Aluminum Company of America). Alcoa’s products find application across numerous industries, including aircraft, automobiles, commercial transportation, packaging, building and construction, oil and gas, and others. Alcoa has operations in many countries, including Australia, Brazil, Iceland, Canada, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Guinea, and Spain.
In the early and mid-2020s, Alcoa maintained revenues of between $9.28 and $12.45 billion with a workforce of 13,100 to 17,000. During this time, Alcoa was included in Forbes magazine’s listing of America’s best employers. Alcoa was a considerably larger company before 2016, when it split in half, separating its engineering and manufacturing business into a company of approximately equal size called Arconic.
History
Alcoa traces its origins to an electrolytic process for extracting aluminum discovered and patented by Charles Martin Hall in 1886. Many researchers have tried to extract aluminum by electrolysis of an aluminum salt dissolved in water, which yielded aluminum hydroxide, not aluminum. Hall in the United States and Paul Héroult in France avoided the problem by dissolving aluminum oxide in a new solvent-fused cryolite, Na3AlF6. This came to be known as the Hall-Héroult process.
It was only after years of development and substantial capital investment that Hall could scale up the process to produce commercial-level quantities of aluminum. In 1888, Hall joined hands with Alfred E. Hunt, an experienced metallurgist, to establish the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The fledgling company received support from the resources of Mellon banking interests after it had exhausted the initial investment.
In 1891, the company went into production in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and in 1894 it acquired its own bauxite mines and power-generating facilities. In order to expand the market for aluminum, the company pioneered the use of metal in cooking utensils. The move proved so successful that it formed its own cookware subsidiary, Aluminum Cooking Utensil Company, in 1901.
From 1902 to 1915, the company steadily added new plants at Massena, New York (1903), Alcoa, Tennessee (1911), Edgewater, New Jersey (1915), and Badin, North Carolina (1915). In 1907 the Pittsburgh Reduction Company changed its name to Aluminum Company of America but went on to shorten it to Alcoa Inc. in 1998. The New Kensington facility, meanwhile, expanded to thirty-one buildings in the complex, housing six departments (tubes, sheets, rods, bar and wire, extrusion, jobbing, foil) and two subsidiaries (Aluminum Cooking Utensil Company and Aluminum Seal Company).
During the First and Second World Wars, the company continued to grow steadily, benefiting greatly from the increased wartime demand for aluminum used in aircraft and other military equipment. During World War II, the U.S. government financed new plants that were built and run by Alcoa, but also encouraged the development of other aluminum producers. U.S. production had grown from 164,000 tons in 1939 to 920,000 tons in 1943, an increase of over 450 percent. Alcoa still produced 93 percent of the country’s aluminum ingot.
After the war, the Alcoa plants that the government helped build were sold off to two new rivals, Reynolds Metals Company and Permanente Metals Corporation, owned by industrialist Henry Kaiser. In 1950, under a district court decree, the U.S. aluminum market was carved up between the three, with Alcoa getting 50.9 percent of production capacity. The rest was shared between Reynolds, at 30.9 percent, and Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation, formerly Permanente Metals, at 18.2 percent. With this move, the U.S. government finally ended the monopoly over the U.S. aluminum market that the company had acquired through circumstance and its expansion and research and development efforts. This was also in the spirit of the ruling of Justice Learned Hand in United States v. Aluminum Company of America (1945), an antitrust case against Alcoa brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
After decades of successful growth, including prize-winning sustainability initiatives, Alcoa hit another legal snag in 2014, when Alcoa and a joint venture under its control settled a case of alleged bribing of officials of Bahrain’s state-controlled aluminum smelter. The case was brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Under the terms of the settlement, Alcoa agreed to pay the SEC $161 million to settle the charges in five installments over four years. In settlement of the criminal claims with the DOJ, Alcoa World Alumina LLC, a joint venture with Australia's Alumina Ltd., pleaded guilty to one count of violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The settlement would see AWA pay the DOJ $223 million in five installments over four years.
In 2022, the company employed approximately 13,100 individuals and brought in a revenue of 12.45 billion. Producing 42.1 million dry metric tons of bauxite using responsible practices, the company was the world's second-largest miner of this product. In addition to a $723 million profit and $16 billion assets, the company's 2022 accomplishments included several eco-friendly advancements. Alcoa's Sustana line of alumina and aluminum products continued to expand and become more earth-friendly, and the company installed press filtration technology in its Brazilian processing facility that conserves water and energy. This technology was already in use in their Australian plants. Alcoa also made the Forbes 2022 America's Best Employers By State list. In August 2024, Alcoa acquired Alumina Limited, an Australian mining corporation, for $2.8 billion.
Impact
Architects and designers were quick to realize the potential of aluminum as a building material. Aluminum’s strength-to-weight ratio allowed the use of thinner and lighter sections of the metal for spandrels and windows. The Empire State Building, completed in 1931, used thousands of Alcoa aluminum spandrels. In 1952, Alcoa built the Alcoa Building in Pittsburgh, which was the first aluminum-sheathed skyscraper in the United States. The building served as the company’s headquarters, and over the next six years, hundreds of Alcoa aluminum-sheathed buildings were built in the United States. In 1973, Alcoa products helped build the World Trade Center.
In 1903, the Wright brothers used an Alcoa aluminum crankcase in their aircraft. Since then, Alcoa has delivered numerous innovations in aerospace aluminum. Alcoa aluminum was used in many aviation firsts, including the world’s first passenger planes, the propeller used on the first transatlantic flight in 1927, the world’s first passenger jet, Boeing’s 707, and the Airbus A380.
In partnership with customer Pittsburgh Brewing, Alcoa introduced the first Easy-Open beer can in 1962 and pioneered the technology for rapid production of aluminum cans in 1968.
In 1948, Alcoa developed the aluminum forged wheel for trucks, creating the market for the stronger, lighter, more aesthetic wheel. "Alcoas," as the wheels came to be called by truckers, gained a reputation for durability, fuel efficiency, and shine on the road.
In 1994, teaming up with Audi, Alcoa introduced the A8, the world’s first passenger car to use an all-aluminum body and space-frame design.
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