Alumina Company of Guinea

The company began construction of the Bayer process alumina refinery in 1957. The open pit mine opened in 1959 and the first alumina was produced on 23 March 1960 with the plant turning out 550 tonnes per day. The quality of the trihydrate bauxite allowed the digesters to operate at atmospheric pressure (low temperature). The target capacity was 480,000 tonnes per year (1,315tpd; it was attained by February 1961). Project cost was $150 million. The new town of Sabende was built to house some 5,000 workers. The kilns and the power plant burned oil, which initially came from the Caribbean. A 96-mile meter gauge railroad was laid to the Port of Conakry. The first shipments were made on 4 May 1960: 6,000 tons carried on the Spidola to Norway and 6,000 tons by the French ore carrier Paul Heroult to Douala and from there to the 45,000tpa French/Belgian Alucam smelter at Edea, Cameroon, built in 1958 at the 125MW hydroelectric plant. About 2.0 tonnes of alumina are required to produce 1.0 tonnes of metal.

Pechiney-Ugine was in charge of operations. Olin in February 1959 bought expropriation insurance covering $56 million from the International Cooperation Administration.

Effective 2 July 1973 the government obtained a 49% ownership, and the private consortium (Frialco) held on to 51% in the Societe d'Economie Mixte Friguia.

Noranda obtained 38.5% from Olin Mathieson in 1974. Plant capacity was 650,000 tonnes per year.

In the 1990s Friguia faced serious financial trouble. Frialco (as the result of a failed attempt by the government to further privatize the company) sold its stake for a symbolic $1 to the government in 1998. In 2000, the government and the Reynolds Metals Company formed ACG (Alumina Compagnie de Guinée) to operate the refinery, in which the government had a 15% stake, while retaining full ownership of the plant. Reynolds sold its interest to RUSAL in 2002 and in April 2006 RUSAL bought the government's 15% stake in ACG and the refinery, whose capacity then was 640,000tpa with the bauxite mine furnishing 1.9 million tpa.

Following the 2008 Guinean coup d'état, the new government sued Rusal in May 2009, alleging that the acquisition in 2006 was improper and ownership had to be returned. In September 2009 the court ruled in favor of the government, but Rusal's appeal succeeded in March 2010 when the appeals court confirmed that the International Court of Arbitration in Paris had jurisdiction as stipulated in the agreement between the government and Rusal. In 2014 the Paris court ruled that the acquisition had been legitimate and ordered the government to compensate Rusal for €250,000 in legal fees.

A long lasting pay dispute erupted on 4 April 2012 into a strike. Rusal evacuated their personnel for security concerns and said that equipment was being plundered and that a humanitarian crisis was in the making in the town that depended on the plant for its water and electricity supply. The plant had employed 3,200 workers. On 22 June 2016 Rusal agreed to begin restoration work on at Fria on 10 January 2017, part of an agreement that laid out a schedule for the development of the Dian-Dian bauxite mine project, wholly owned by Rusal, and which also included a finding that the construction of an alumina refinery at Dian-Dian was not economically feasible. The plant was restarted on 20 June 2018, one day after shipments from the Dian-Dian bauxite mines had commenced.