United Arab Emirates: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, has passed 20 million hours work on its Al Taweelah alumina refinery construction project without a single Lost Time Injury.

This is the equivalent of one person working in construction for more than 7,000 years without an accident that leads to time off work.

Al Taweelah alumina refinery, located next to EGA’s Al Taweelah aluminium smelter in Abu Dhabi, is one of the largest industrial construction sites in the UAE, with more than 11,000 people working on site. The alumina refinery is the first to be built in the UAE. Alumina is the feedstock for aluminium smelters.

Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of EGA, said: “Safety is the first priority of everyone at EGA, regardless of their position in the organisation. This safety record is the result of intense effort throughout the alumina refinery project team, and I commend them. We must maintain this focus on safety until construction is complete, and continue it throughout the decades of Al Taweelah alumina refinery’s operation.”

At the core of Al Taweelah alumina refinery’s safety programme are more than 280 safety professionals, managing systems and processes to keep workers safe.

People working on the project have received nearly 100,000 hours of specialist safety training so far, with nine different courses for each individual to complete.

An important focus has been tackling language barriers on a site where the cosmopolitan workforce speaks 44 different languages. Training is conducted in multiple languages, and risk assessments and other key safety documents are largely pictorial rather than using words.

Each team starts every shift with a toolbox talk highlighting safety requirements. Over 230,000 toolbox talks have taken place on the project to date.

Workers are encouraged to report anything they perceive could be a safety hazard so it can be investigated and action taken to prevent any incident happening. So far over 36,000 reports have been made and action taken.

The project safety team selects high-performing individuals to act as trained work observers, praising good safety performance and correcting any risky behaviours. Data from these observations, over 95,000 to date, is collated to share improvement opportunities with the entire workforce.

EGA also rewards workers financially for choosing safe behaviours at work, with the rewards increasing in value as more are earned.

First alumina from Al Taweelah alumina refinery, which has a total budgeted project cost of approximately $3.3 billion, is expected during the first half of 2019.

Once full ramp up is achieved, Al Taweelah alumina refinery is expected to produce 2 million tonnes of alumina per year, meeting 40 per cent of EGA’s alumina requirements and helping to secure the competitive supply of the feedstock for aluminium smelters.

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About EGA

Emirates Global Aluminium is equally-owned by Mubadala Investment Company of Abu Dhabi and the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

It is the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside the oil and gas industry, and the largest company jointly owned by the two Emirates.

EGA’s aluminium is the second largest made-in-the UAE export after oil and gas. In 2017, EGA produced 2.6 million tonnes of cast metal. EGA is the only UAE producer and makes the UAE the fifth largest aluminium producing nation in the world.

EGA has more than 350 customers in over 60 countries. About 80 per cent of EGA’s production is value added products, one of the highest proportions of any aluminium company in the world.

EGA’s aluminium is primarily used in the construction, automotive, packaging, aerospace and electronics industries.

Over 10 per cent of EGA’s production is sold in the UAE to around 26 downstream aluminium companies that make products with EGA’s aluminium. The growing broader aluminium sector in the UAE already employs around 30,000 people, making it the largest employer amongst the UAE’s energy intensive industries.

EGA itself employs around 7,000 of these people including almost 1,200 UAE Nationals.

EGA has focused on technology development for over 25 years. EGA has used its own technology for every smelter expansion since the 1990s and has retrofitted all its older production lines. In 2016 EGA became the first UAE industrial company to licence its core industrial process technology internationally.

As a corporate citizen of the UAE, Emirates Global Aluminium aspires in all its operations to be measured amongst the world’s leading metals and mining companies in meeting its environmental and social responsibilities.

In 2017, EGA became the first Middle East headquartered company to join the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, a global programme to foster greater sustainability and transparency in the aluminium industry.

EGA was formed in 2014 through the merger of Dubai Aluminium and Emirates Aluminium.

DUBAL’s Jebel Ali aluminium smelter began production in 1979. At almost five square kilometres, EGA’s Jebel Ali site is five times bigger than Dubai Mall.

EMAL started production in 2009 and its Al Taweelah aluminium smelter was the largest single-site aluminium smelter in the world when completed. EGA’s Al Taweelah site is five times bigger than Al Maryah Island at six square kilometres.

EGA has its own power stations at both sites, producing electricity to meet its needs. EGA’s electricity generation capacity is 5,450 megawatts, making EGA the third largest electricity generator in the UAE after the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority.

EGA also produces water through desalination units at its power plants. In addition to meeting its own water requirements, EGA supplies 1.5 per cent of the water needs of Dubai as well as commercial water customers and bottlers.

Today EGA is expanding upstream and internationally to secure the natural resources the UAE’s aluminium industry needs and create new revenue streams.

EGA’s wholly-owned subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation is building a bauxite mine and associated export infrastructure in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, in one of the largest greenfield investments in that country in over 40 years.

In the UAE, EGA is building the country’s first alumina refinery at Al Taweelah. The project will reduce the UAE’s dependence on imported alumina and supply 75 per cent of the Al Taweelah smelter’s needs.

For more information on EGA please visit www.ega.ae.

© Press Release 2018