Alcan Aluminum Corporation was established in 1902. At that time, it was known as Northern Aluminum Company and was the Canadian subsidiary of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which was later called Alcoa. In 1925, it was renamed Aluminum Company of Canada and it separated from Alcoa in 1928. Aluminum Company of Canada was a supplier of aluminum ingots. In 1960, the company wanted to enter the
. U.S. market, and purchased the plants of the National Distillers & Chemical Corporation and the Cerro Corporation to form its American subsidiary. While neither plant was in Cleveland, the company chose this city as its headquarters. In 1965, Alcan Aluminum Corporation was founded. By this time, Alcan had established itself as a producer of aluminum sheet and plate, cable and powder. In 1969, it began an acquisition program and started distributing aluminum along with other metal products. It also entered the foil business, and within 10 years, it was one of the top aluminum manufacturers in the United States. Throughout the 1970s, the company made more acquisitions and expanded its plants, but when the recession struck in the early 1980s, the company had to institute some cost-cutting measure. In the late 1980s, the company resumed its expansion and opened the world's largest aluminum can recycling facility in Kentucky. In October 2000, Alcan Aluminium merged with algroup and changed its name to Alcan in 2001. In 2003, it acquired Pechiney of France, as well as some other companies. In 2007, Alcan was acquired by Rio Tinto, a leading mining organization. The new company is known as Rio Tinto Alcan. Today its products include bauxite, alumina and aluminum products. The company's aluminum products include rolling slab (sheet ingot), extrusion billet, forging stock, rod, foundry and remelt ingot, and specialty products like busbar electrical conductors, Duralcan and other metal matrix composites. http://www.riotintoalcan.com/index.asp or http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=AAC
