Alba’s Casthouse gets ISO 9001

Aluminum Bahrain (Alba)’s position as one of the top quality focused smelters in the world was bolstered with the re-certification of Alba’s Casthouse department to the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System (QMS) Standard after undergoing rigorous assessment procedures conducted by Bahrain-based Bureau Veritas BV on June 5 and 6, 2012. The assessment was made for Casthouse as well as for other departments that directly interface with Casthouse to achieve departmental goals. These departments include, Procurement & Warehousing, Casthouse Maintenance & Instrumentation, Metallurgy, Customer Technical Assistance and Marketing. The certification will remain valid until June 2015. At the expiry of the current certificate, a full scale re-certification audit will be conducted to renew the certificate for a cycle of another three years. A special ceremony was held at the Alba plant during which the certificate was officially presented to Alba’s Chief Executive, Laurent Schmitt by the Chief Marketing Officer, Jean-Baptiste Lucas. Also present at the event was Metallurgy & Customer Technical Support Manager, Garry Martin as well as Metallurgist, Kishore Ghosh. Commenting on the re-certification of the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System Standard for the Casthouse, Alba’s Chief Executive, Laurent Schmitt said: “Alba remains committed to maintain its focus on quality across every area of operation. The ISO certifications provide a globally recognized benchmark to help us measure our performance, develop action plans to be continually recognized for the quality of our products and services as well as strengthen our reputation as one of the world’s leading aluminum smelters. On behalf of everyone in Alba, I would like to congratulate the Casthouse team and their partnering departments for enabling the company to constantly maintain quality standards that have helped us in achieving the certification every three years.” Alba’s first QMS certification dates back to June 1994, and has been periodically upgraded with each new revision of the Standard. The recent upgrade to ISO 9001:2008 took place in June 2009. Bureau Veritas BV is the certifying body while the QMS is accredited under the British UKAS scheme.