Competition for Bauxite

This week, subject to long-delayed final approval by the Office of Production Management, the U.S. appeared about to get two new plants which would increase its sorely needed aluminum output by 7% (60,000,000 lb. a year). Most notable fact about these plants: they will use no bauxite, the ore which (reduced by Alcoa's Hall process) has been the source of all U.S. aluminum up to now. Instead, they will use alunite, a grey-white mineral.

Nor will Aluminum Co. operate these plants. They belong to a newcomer to aluminum called Kalunite, Inc. Kalunite is a corporate cousin of Western Cartridge Co.; both are controlled by Olin Corp., bossed by 80-year-old, physically feeble, mentally strong Franklin William Olin. Western Cartridge, reportedly the second-largest privately owned company in the U.S. (first: Ford), daily makes over a million shells at its sprawling East Alton, Ill. plant. Through Western Cartridge, munitions-man Olin also controls New Haven's famed Winchester Repeating Arms Co., likewise busy on defense orders.

Getting aluminum from alunite is nothing new. Government geologists uncovered its possibilities while exploring Utah's mineral resources in 1911. In 1929-34, Bohn Aluminum & Brass experimented with alunite-aluminum but gave up without putting it to use. Meanwhile, Kal-unite's engineer-president, Frank Eichelberger, started fiddling with alunite. He fiddled for ten years. Last March, when the aluminum shortage became acute, he stopped practicing, sold Harold Ickes on the process.

The process will, it is calculated, make alumina (from which aluminum is reduced) for $35 a ton against $33 by the Hall process. But the alunite process yields one-half ton of sulfate potash worth $18.12 and one-third ton sulfuric acid worth $6, as byproducts. Moreover, alunite-aluminum uses less electricity than Hall-produced aluminum. Kalunite hopes to borrow up to $16,000,000 from RFC to build two plants in Marysvale, Utah, perhaps a third in Washington's White River Valley. Both sites are near supplies of alunite ore, also not too far from titanic Grand Coulee, which could supply the juice.

Only hitch in Eichelberger's plan is that visible U.S. supplies of alunite are enough for only 600,000,000 lb. of aluminum--less than six months' defense needs.

When (and if) Kalunite goes into production, Alcoa's once-firm grip on the U.S. aluminum supply will be further weakened at two points: the Hall process will have its first real rival, and another corporation will have joined Reynolds Metals and the U.S. Government in competing with Alcoa. This must come as a blow to 0PM Economist Grenville Ross Holden, who has fought aluminum expansion plans (unless they were Alcoa's) all along the line. Young Holden, who left Eastman Kodak to handle aluminum and magnesium matters for OPM, admitted to the Truman Committee last month (TIME, May 26) that he had no special knowledge of aluminum, and also refused to give any good reason why expansion plans of Bohn Aluminum & Brass had been blocked.

The Kalunite proposal has been kicking around his desk for three months, awaiting his final O.K. Despite expert approval from the Bureau of Mines and pressure from most of official Washington, he referred the plan for further study by Columbus. Ohio's Battelle Memorial Institute, which was preparing its report this week.

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