A new Dutch company run by a former Australian investment banker is in advanced talks to acquire Australia’s second-biggest aluminium producer, Portland Aluminium Smelter, from America’s Alcoa Corporation.
Dutch company Aloft Holdings, formed last November to buy and run aluminium assets globally, has run due diligence at Portland and been talking to Alcoa about the potential deal for months, according to sources involved in the talks.
Alcoa’s local subsidiary Alcoa of Australia owns a 55 per cent stake in the Portland smelter, and has held confidential talks with Aloft and other potential suitors in the past six months. The smelter’s minority investors include China’s CITIC and Japan’s Marubeni. It would be a big acquisition for Aloft, which was set up in November last year to acquire Dutch smelter Aldel in a management buyout and create what it said would be a new international metals group.
The talks are sure to capture Victoria and Commonwealth government attention. Portland Aluminium, which opened in 1986, is a large employer in south-western Victoria, and has received plenty of assistance from governments in the past 30 years.
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