TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION IN HYDRO BAUXITE & ALUMINA

Hydro Bauxite & Alumina (B&A) adopts a pragmatic approach to technology management, which involves setting aggressive long term strategic business goals and clearly identifying specific technology improvements necessary to achieve them. Typical areas of business improvement include increasing throughput on existing assets, reducing capex intensity, reducing opex, improving product quality and improving health, safety and environmental conditions.

The underlying focus of this approach is to nurture and enable innovative thinking.

Following a disciplined and straight forward roadmap, technology gaps can be closed by incrementally developing existing technologies and practices, selecting state-of-the-art technologies available in the market or developing new technologies through R&D.

The knowledge base is provided by a small team of Hydro experts, in consultation with selected engineering companies, seeking input from major equipment suppliers, technology development entities within the alumina industry and independent consultants.

Governance is provided by a technology committee of upper management and senior technical representatives. The committee is currently overseeing a portfolio of more than 20 prioritized initiatives, expected to deliver more than 3 times the value of the initial investment over the next 5 years.