Alcoa 1996 Annual Report Download - page 6

4
Adding Value, From the Ground Up
It all starts with dirt. This kind of dirt is called bauxite
ore. If you looked at a four-ton truckload of it and
someone asked, “What can you make out of that?” —
you would think, “Not much. Maybe the base for a
driveway.”
But from four tons of bauxite, it’s possible
to refine about two tons of alumina —
a powdery oxide of aluminum. It’s not easy. The
technology is complex and the equipment is massive.
But Alcoa has refined the refining process to an art.
And from those two tons of alumina, we can smelt a
ton of aluminum. Smelting aluminum was the invention
that launched Alcoa 110 years ago.
A ton of aluminum is enough to make the cans for
over 60,000 Cokes, Pepsis or Buds. Enough to make
the spaceframes for seven Audi A8 luxury cars. Enough
to make 40,000 computer memory disks, capable of
storing all the books ever published.
All from a truckload of dirt. It’s almost magical. And we’re
proud to have the magicians who can pull it off.
Of course not everything Alcoa makes is aluminum. About $3.1
billion of our 1996 revenues came from nonaluminum products.
But the rest involves aluminum, and as one
of the owners of this amazing series of processes, you
might want to stop for a moment to review how it
all happens — how
Alcoa starts with
dirt and, step by step,
keeps on adding value
until we and our customers are
able to produce all of the modern
wonders made of aluminum.