GLADSTONE INDUSTRY
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GLADSTONE
The industrial progress of the Gladstone area represents one of Australia's development success stories. Today, the area is certainly the land of the giants, with the world's largest alumina plant, the State's largest power station, the State's busiest port and soon to have Australia's largest aluminium smelter. Until the mid 1960's, Gladstone was a small community of 6000 people with a meatworks and relatively-small port trade being its main economic base.
The key to industrial growth was the excellent harbour, together with many of the services and raw materials needed by industry - suitable land, transport, water, electricity, coal, limestone. The establishment of the Queensland Alumina bauxite refinery was the catalyst formodern industrial growth which has seen the district population grow five-fold in the past quarter century.
The alumina plant employs 1300 people at a massive industrial complex covering about 80 hectares. The plant produces about a tenth of the world's alumina. Following construction of the Gladstone Power Station in the Seventies, the Boyne Smelter began aluminium production in 1982. Alumina is transported from QAL to the smelter conveyor for electrical reduction into aluminium ingots and blocks. With several expansions, the Gladstone Power Station - now operated by NRG - plays a vital role in maintaining a reliable, safe and economical electricity supply to industry and throughout Queensland.
