From smelters to servers: A deep dive into Alcoa's idled sites

Alcoa has said it is targeting $500 million to $1 billion in proceeds from the 10 sites over the next five years.

These are not simple land sales. CFO Molly Beerman has emphasized joint venture structures, value-sharing mechanisms and multiyear payment streams, suggesting the company is seeking more than a one-time transaction.

The 10 US sites identified by Alcoa at Investor Day include Northwest Alloys, Wenatchee and Longview in Washington; Arkansas; Point Comfort and Sherwin Copano in Texas; the former Tennessee smelter in Alcoa, Tenn.; Badin N.C.; Massena East, N.Y.; and Fort Meade, Fla.

What are these assets? Why were they idled? And what constraints remain?

The Pacific-Northwest: Power abundance meets market realities

Wenatchee, Wash.

The Wenatchee smelter was fully curtailed in 2015, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology records.

In 2018, Alcoa paid $62.4 million under its electricity supply agreement with Chelan Public Utility District (PUD) and permanently closed one potline.

The facility had access to hydropower. According to an Alcoa press release filed at the time, 26% of output from two Chelan PUD projects, but restart economics proved prohibitive.

Wenatchee illustrates a recurring pattern: Even hydro-backed power contracts were insufficient when aluminum prices weakened, and the need for additional capital to restart operations mounted.

Northwest Alloys (Addy and Longview, Wash.)

The Addy facility operated as a magnesium smelter, as well as a silicon and ferro-silicon producer, from 1976 to 2001. It remains shut down and is being marketed as an industrial site, according to the State of Washington Department of Ecology.

The former Addy smelter continues to maintain an active state waste discharge permit, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

Longview, more recently associated with Millennium Bulk Terminals, reverted to Alcoa’s Northwest Alloys control after a bankruptcy and lease withdrawal in 2021, according to the State of Washington Department of Ecology.

The smelter and cable mill was owned and operated by Reynolds Metal Company for much of its nearly 60-year history. Alcoa completed the acquisition of the facility near the end of its operating life.

Today, the Longview site functions primarily as a storage facility and discharges non-routine stormwater and wastewater into the Columbia River.

Northwest Alloys has previously proposed demolishing the remaining on-site structures, including the cable plant and cast house, according to a proposal filed with the Cowlitz County Department of Building and Planning. That proposal followed the bankruptcy and lease withdrawal by Millennium Bulk Terminals.

The Northeast: The other Massena

Massena East, NY

Massena East represents one of the earlier closures in Alcoa’s cost-reduction strategy.

In 2014, Alcoa permanently closed the remaining two potlines, reducing smelting capacity by 84,000 metric tons per year. One potline had already been closed in 2013.

The closure was framed as a competitiveness decision. Alcoa was moving down the global cost curve. The neighboring Massena West smelter continues to operate and remains an integral component of Alcoa’s US primary aluminum capacity.

Massena East is grid-connected via the New York Power Authority and historically powered by the St. Lawrence-FDR hydro facility. That transmission infrastructure remains a potential asset in redevelopment discussions, according to CRU Group’s Aluminum Smelter Power Tariffs data. (CRU Group is the parent company of AMU.)

The Southeast: Alcoa’s historic footprint

Badin, NC

Badin began operations at the Badin, N.C. site in 1915, according to North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality.

Smelting was reduced in 2002 and stopped in 2007. The plant closed in 2010. Demolition was completed in 2012.

Badin is not simply surplus land. It is a partially remediated industrial brownfield site subject to regulatory oversight.

At its peak, the Badin Works complex included two potlines, an electrode plant, casting facilities and machine shops.

Alcoa, Tenn.

The Tennessee smelter used self-generated hydroelectric power through Alcoa Power Generating Inc. APGI owned and operated the Tapoco hydro system — a four-dam network on the Little Tennessee and Cheoah rivers with roughly 366 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, connected to the smelter via dedicated high-voltage transmission lines, according to CRU Group.

Despite significant self-generation capacity, the smelter remained partially dependent on Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) purchases, including interruptible and surplus rate structures. Purchased power carried materially higher costs than self-generated hydro, increasing exposure to regional pricing dynamics.

The smelter represented one of the company’s most vertically integrated operations. In 2010 — the year both potlines were shut down — the facility had about 291,000 metric tons per year of capacity across two prebake potlines totaling 328 pots.

The interplay between self-generation and purchased power shaped the facility’s competitiveness. Ultimately, aluminum pricing and electricity costs converged unfavorably.

The Gulf Coast: Refining and residue assets

Point Comfort

Established in 1948 as a smelter, commissioned in 1950 and later operating as an alumina refinery, the site was curtailed in 2016 and closed in 2019, according to CRU Bauxite and Alumina profile data. The refinery operated under the Bayer process. It had about 2.3 million metric tons per year of alumina capacity prior to curtailment.

The 3,000-acre complex included a hydrate facility and deepwater port access, receiving roughly 50,000-metric-ton bauxite cargoes from Guinea and other regions and shipping metallurgical-grade alumina by barge and rail to downstream smelters.

In 2015 and 2016, Alcoa curtailed about 1.2 million metric tons of alumina capacity at the site as part of a broader restructuring effort amid market pressures. The refinery was fully curtailed in 2016 and later closed in 2019.

Demolition and environmental remediation are ongoing in coordination with the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Army Corp of Engineers and Texas regulators, according to Alcoa in a press release at the time.

Unlike pure smelter sites, Point Comfort includes port adjacency and shipping channel access, attributes that could matter for industrial redevelopment beyond data centers.

Sherwin Copano

The Copano facility is tied to the former Sherwin Alumina refinery near Corpus Christi, a 1.6 million-metric-ton-per-year Bayer-sinter refinery commissioned in 1953 and supplied by imported bauxite through the Port of Corpus Christi, according to CRU.

As part of the 2000 divestiture of the Sherwin alumina refinery, which was required following Alcoa’s acquisition of Reynolds Metals Co., Alcoa retained responsibility for remediation of certain legacy environmental conditions, including closure obligations for active bauxite reside disposal areas at Copano.

Following Sherwin Alumina’s Chapter 11 filing in 2016, contractual obligations were assigned to Copano Enterprises, a subsidiary of Alcoa, as part of the bankruptcy settlement, according to San Patricio Municipal Water District records. Public records show the refinery’s water and infrastructure agreements were embedded in a broader industrial corridor service Gulf Coat manufacturing.

Unlike Point Comfort, Copano does not represent an industrial processing asset but rather a legacy residue management site with defined remediation obligations.

Florida: The phosphate legacy

Fort Meade, Fla.

Forte Meade produced aluminum fluoride, an input to aluminum smelting, until production was temporarily shut down in 2001 due to reduced demand, according to the US Geological Survey.

Alcoa said the plant had 24,000 metric tons per year of capacity and relied on feedstock from the phosphoric acid industry.

As recently as 2022, Florida solid waste regulatory filings show the Fort Meade site maintaining a multi-millions-dollar letter of credit to satisfy state financial assurance requirements, reinforcing its status as an actively regulated waste management facility.

Any prospective buyer would not inherit a payable debt but would likely need to assume or replace the state-required financial assurance instrument tied to closure and post-closure obligations.

While not a smelter, the facility remains an industrial property with chemical infrastructure legacy.

Precedents from other Alcoa sites

Intalco (Washington)

Opened in 1966 and permanently closed in 2023 after being fully curtailed since 2020, Intalco represented 279,000 metric tons per year of primary aluminum capacity with three potlines and 720 pots, according to CRU Power Smelter data. The closure reduced Alcoa’s global consolidated capacity to 2.69 million metric tons.

Power costs were an issue.

Intalco lacked access to competitively priced electricity and would have required significant capital to restart. AltaGas has acquired right to develop about 1,600 acres at the site, including utility and transportation infrastructure.

The site remains grid-connected and industrially zoned — two characteristics highly attractive to data center developers.

Eastalco (Maryland)

The facility closed in 2010 and sold in 2021 for $100 million in cash to a Quantum Loophole-TPG joint venture for development into a large-scale data center campus.

Alcoa recorded a $90 million gain. The 2,100-acre property had completed remediation and grading before the sale.

Rockdale (Texas)

Curtailment began in 2008; permanent closure followed in 2017.

Alcoa sold the site in 2021 for $240 million. Riot Platforms later acquired fee simple ownership of 200 acres and signed a 10-year data center lease with AMD, with potential expansion to 200 MW of IT load.

Rockdale demonstrates the structural shift: former smelter grid interconnections and water rights now underpin AI infrastructure growth.

The New Madrid benchmark

Any discussion of idled US smelter assets inevitably runs through one recent reference point: the New Madrid smelter in Missouri operated by Magnitude 7 Metals.

Until its January 2024 idling, New Madrid was the last independently operated primary aluminum smelter competing alongside Alcoa and Century Aluminum.

Unlike many of the Alcoa sites discussed above, some of which have been idle or permanently closed for a decade or more, New Madrid was operating as recently as two years ago.

Its potlines, workforce base and power arrangements were contemporary. The facility was widely viewed as technically able to restart, given that its electricity costs, while elevated, were materially lower than those faced by Century’s Hawesville operation.

That said, the plant’s shutdowns were tied primarily to the electricity provider and the breakdown of its power contracting arrangements rather than to technical limitations of the smelter itself.

New Madrid sourced electricity from Ameren Missouri under a regulated tariff structure that became increasingly contentious after 2010, when Ameren sought an 11% base-rate increase and then-owner Noranda attempt to secure industrial rate relief, according to CRU Group research.

Following Noranda’s bankruptcy and Magnitude 7 Metals’ acquisition, the smelter entered into a power purchase agreement with Associated Electric Cooperative, but Magnitude was unable to secure a suitable renewal contract.

Even with its power-related instability, New Madrid represents the shortest-idled primary smelter in the US system, having operated far more recently than the legacy facilities discussed above.

Looking ahead

Primary aluminum smelting in the US has contracted sharply over the past decade.

Energy intensity — roughly 15-16 MW hours per metric ton at sites like Hawesville and New Madrid — makes competitiveness highly sensitive to electricity pricing.

Even under Section 232 tariffs, electricity pricing has constrained restarts.

At Alcoa’s Investor Day and on earnings calls, Alcoa executives stressed that monetization is no longer just about land disposition. Structures may include joint venture co-development, upfront payments plus long-term revenue streams, value-sharing mechanisms, or transfers times with remediation completion.

One primary US site is expected to reach agreement in the first half of 2026. The company has said it receives regular inquiries from hyperscalers.

There are only a finite number of brownfield smelter sites remaining in the US. Alcoa has made clear it does not intend to pursue greenfield smelting investment in the US, citing energy pricing and capital intensity.

In that environment, the question is what form the transition of these sites will ultimately take, not whether these sites will change hands.

For years, many of these sites have represented more financial drag than strategic opportunity. If capital recovery now offers clearer returns than restart economics, producers will follow the capital.

Producers are unlikely to ignore that reality.