OREANDA-NEWS. October 06, 2010. UC RUSAL Plc (SEHK: 486, EuroNext: RUSAL/RUAL), the world’s largest aluminium producer, announces the release of one hundred thousandth tonne of aluminum foil produced at ARMENAL foil rolling mill in Yerevan, Armenia.

Since its launch in 2000 ARMENAL annual production has increased by more than 20 times. The bulk of production, or around 65%, has been released after a large-scale comprehensive modernization of the plant completed in late 2006.

RUSAL’s investment in the modernization of the mill amounted to over USD 100 million allowed to upgrade ARMENAL to a new level of production volumes within limited timeframe, to master the production of hyperfine foil and put additional equipment into operation. Production growth at ARMENAL is accompanied by improvement of all technical and economic indicators. The metal processing costs is reduced by factor 2 whereas per person output is doubled. Yield production ratio has stabilized at 70%. External rejects together with the number of customer claims has reduced to a minimum, internal rejects are reduced to 3%.

The sales geography has been significantly broadened. ARMENAL is one of the main Armenian exporting companies and a leader in profits from production sales that is supplied to customers in 20 countries with main markets being North America, Europe and Middle East.

Alexander Burdin, Director of the Packaging Division, pointed out that “ARMENAL is one of the leading foil rolling mills in Russia and CIS. Its production is competitive and demanded in Europe, America and Middle East. ARMENAL currently aims to further increase the effectiveness of the production, improve the quality of its products and financial and economic indicators that will allow producing another 100,000 tonnes of foil in less than four years”.