Alcoa's CEO On TITAL Acqusition & Effects On Business From Lower Oil Prices

The third largest producer of aluminum in the world, Alcoa Inc AA, announced today in the morning that it will be acquiring Germany-based castings company TITAL. Klaus Kleinfeld, chairman & CEO at Alcoa was recently on CNBC to discuss about the deal and the company’s further expansion in the aerospace sector.

“Well, look […] if it hadn’t been for the invention that our founding father Charles Martin Hall made 126 years ago, inventing the things that you see around here all made of aluminum, we wouldn’t be able to fly around the world, I wouldn’t be able to be here today. So, this is for us kind of in the middle of our DNA, what the TITAL acquisition […] it’s not the biggest one, Firth Rixsonis much much bigger. What this does, it completes our transformation in a way that we are adding more Titanium,” Kleinfeld said.

“I have always said, we are firing on two cylinders, we are increasing our multi-material innovation lightweight powerhouse capabilities and the second thing, we are bringing our commodity business down on the cost [turf] and that’s basically the strategy we are following […],”

What’ll Happen To Investments In Lightweight Aircrafts When Oil Prices Are Slumping

“Well, look, it’s very hard to predict where oil prices are going to go going forward. Most of those investments are done from a longer term perspective and what we see today, the market is still growing, orders are coming in, it has a characteristic of almost 9 year order backlog now on the large commercial planes. This is a very attractive market and we believe lightweighting is going to continue […]”