Gulf Aluminium Rolling Mill (Garmco), the Bahrain-based international aluminium rolling mill and one of the largest downstream aluminium facilities in the Middle East, recently invited a delegation from the American Chamber of Commerce in Bahrain (AmCham Bahrain) to tour its plant in northern Sitra, to discuss cooperation and future plans.

Mohamed Essa Ebrahim, Garmco acting chief executive officer, welcomed AmCham members and provided them with an overview of the company’s growth, future plans, and the way it benefited from the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in opening the US market for its products, said a statement.

Ebrahim said: “Our company is pleased to showcase its plant and its contribution to Bahrain’s economy and US-Bahrain bilateral trade.”

“The company’s new expansion which will soon be fully operational re-melt plant will increase its production while saving us energy and resources,” he said.

“The US is an important market for us and we are pleased to have AmCham members who come from different sectors to visit us today to learn about Bahrain’s aluminium industry and hear about our FTA success story,” he added.

H Delano Roosevelt, AmCham vice president, said: “We are honoured to have this unique opportunity to meet the executive leadership team at Garmco and learn about an important industry in Bahrain.”

“The purpose of AmCham’s plant tours is to better know and understand the industries in Bahrain and the related business opportunities for both in Bahrain and in the US,” he said.

“We are committed to supporting businesses, large and small, in using and benefiting from the FTA,” he added.

The US is Garmco’s largest export market outside of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, currently receiving about 40 per cent of Garmco’s manufactured products.

Garmco strategically ships and stores stocks of core products from the Bahrain mill at the Baltimore Maryland, Houston Texas, and Long Beach California, facilitating convenient just-in-time delivery to customers. Garmco also partners with a US university for research and development.

Aluminium is the top export from Bahrain to the US. In 2016, $406 million worth of aluminium was exported to the US, up from $293 million in 2015.  The company’s rolled aluminium coils are a significant part of this increasing and important export, it stated.

REMELT EXPANSION

Earlier, in August last year, the first aluminium was cast successfully at Garmco’s remelt expansion project. The new $55 million new state-of-the-art recycling and cast house facility is designed to develop Garmco’s metal recycling capability, which will increase its production capacity by 150 per cent to 200,000 tonnes of aluminium slabs per annum.

This expansion comes as part of a three year programme aimed at growing the company on a regional and international level. It is designed to enable Garmco to consolidate and expand in its key strategic sales markets with higher recycle content aluminium alloys, the company said in a release.

Ebrahim commented: “We take this opportunity to thank all team members and partners who have contributed to achieving first metal at the expansion project. This project will further develop the Kingdom’s downstream aluminium industry; the facility will increase Garmco’s production capacity by 150 per cent. We now look forward to a safe and successful ramp-up to full production capacity’.”

Till date, the expansion team has recorded 1,417,305 man-hours without any lost time injury. This achievement demonstrates Garmco’s high commitment to safety.