The county fixture has grown from a provincial maker of aluminum roofing for agricultural buildings to a global aluminum supplier, producing 450 million pounds a year and employing 860 people.


“I’ve been here since 1973,” said company spokesman Steve Fries. “And the one constant has been the can-do work force. We have a lot of good, creative problem solvers.”


Those workers make a high-quality product used in less-than-glamorous items such as car radiators and pots and pans, though Apple Computer uses aluminum from the Lancaster plant for the sleek casings on its G5 and iMac computers.


In 1946, Harry Truman was president, the Baby Boom began and a corporation was born that would add and cut employees, weather lean times, adapt to face global competition and spiking energy costs and change names and addresses.


What hasn’t changed is its presence in Lancaster County.


The past 20 years




Since 1986, the number of workers at the plant has declined though the size of the facility itself has grown.


In the mid-1980s, then-Alumax comprised about one million square feet and 1,100 employees. Today’s Alcoa Lancaster plant at 1480 Manheim Pike has about 860 workers and 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing and office space.


“We do the very best we can to protect job security,” Fries said, but technological advancements have made it possible to increase productivity with fewer workers.


Global competition, particularly from Russia and China, has increased, too.


Pittsburgh-based Alcoa was, until 2000, the world’s oldest and largest aluminum company. While it’s still the oldest, it has ceded the title of largest to Rusal, a Russian corporation. Alcoa employs 129,000 people in 43 counries.


China and Russia both possess larger reserves of bauxite than the United States. Refined bauxite makes alumina, which becomes aluminum when smelted. In 2006, the U.S. has imported virtually all of the alumina and bauxite it has used, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.


The cost of importing raw materials, together with dramatic increases in the prices of the natural gas and electricity used in the manufacturing process, has squeezed Alcoa Lancaster.


“It’s put a great pressure on us,” said Vice President Roy Dirkmaat. “We don’t want to just transfer costs on to our customers so we have to find ways to attack our own waste.”


Past to present




Part of the way the company saves money is by recycling its own excess aluminum. The versatile metal is almost “infinitely recyclable,” said Fries.


Working with recycled metal uses 95 percent less energy than it takes to make new aluminum from ore.


The Lancaster plant makes two products: MIC-6 and nonheat treatable aluminum sheet. The former is used in airplanes and electronics, the latter is used for less demanding products like pots and pans.


Regardless of the sophistication of the final use, the aluminum is made in Lancaster, as it has been for the last 60 years.


The company’s name and address has changed several times since 1946, beginning as New Holland Metals Co. before moving to Mountville in 1948 and becoming the Quaker State Metals Co.


By 1953, Quaker State Metals Co. had grown from five to 100 employees and would increase that number to 250 in 1958.


In 1960, the company moved to its current home, a 105-acre site at 1480 Manheim Pike. As different groups bought controlling interests in the company, its name changed to Howmet Corp. and, in 1983, Alumax.


In 1998, Alcoa acquired Alumax and renamed it Alcoa Mill Products Lancaster.


The future




As for the next 60 years, Dirkmaat said this: “If manufacturing still exists in this country, I want to be the last mill standing.”