US aluminium smelters-utilities link collapsing

Houston

THE business of making aluminium in the US is collapsing - and no other industry has watched the demise as closely as the one that supplies the power used to create molten metal in giant pots.

For more than a century, America's aluminium processors and the electricity generators grew together. Utilities sought out smelters that, in some cases, became their largest consumers. And the metal makers counted on utilities to supply an energy source that accounts for as much as a third of their costs.