U.S. aluminium producer Alcoa Corp is actively marketing 10 closed or curtailed smelting and processing locations to companies in the data centre industry, with its chief executive indicating the first transaction should be completed by the end of June.
Aluminium smelting is energy intensive, and the availability of low-cost power has long been a deciding factor in site siting and operations. That same proximity to abundant electricity has recently attracted data centre developers, who are competing with traditional heavy industry for supply. The surge in demand from data centres has created an opportunity for aluminium firms to sell stakes in some of their idle facilities that happen to sit near plentiful energy resources.
Alcoa CEO Bill Oplinger described the program at the BMO Global Metals, Mining and Critical Minerals Conference in Florida. "We have 10 sites that we’re focused on selling into that space," he said, adding that the company expects "the first sale in the first half of this year. There are two that could follow quickly after that."
Oplinger contrasted Alcoa's approach to past asset disposals by saying the company has historically tried to maximize price and minimize liabilities when divesting properties. He noted the current strategic question is how much incremental value the growth of data centres - and by extension the expansion driven by artificial intelligence workloads - could add to individual site valuations.
"What we’re really trying to understand is the value in a data centre world or an AI world of our individual sites," Oplinger said.
Alcoa’s comments come amid industry moves by peers. One rival, Century Aluminum, recently sold its idle Hawesville smelting site to a data centre firm while retaining a 6.8% stake in the property.
On commodity markets, Oplinger said elevated aluminium prices have not destroyed domestic demand in the United States. At the same time, he warned that weak prices for alumina, the raw material used to produce aluminium, have rendered roughly 50% of refineries globally cash negative. He said that dynamic would likely prompt cutbacks in alumina production globally, though he emphasized those reductions would not come from Alcoa.
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Implications and context
Alcoa’s effort to monetize unused assets by selling to data centre operators highlights the intersection of heavy industry, electricity markets, and the expanding footprint of compute infrastructure. The company is explicitly testing how much additional value AI-driven demand for data centre capacity could confer on sites with favorable power access.