Alcoa World Alumina Australia will establish new offices in the central business district and Pinjarra as part of a state restructure aimed at bringing service delivery and business functions closer to stakeholders.
The move will involve moving around 60 personnel from Alcoa’s existing head office in Booragoon.
Of these, 50 will move to the new Pinjarra office and around 10 will work directly at existing refinery and mine site operations.
The Booragoon office will maintain around 100 people in marketing, information technology, finance, human resources, procurement and strategic materials.
The remaining 20 staff from Booragoon will transfer to a new, yet-to-chosen CBD site, although a company spokesperson indicated it was likely to be on St George’s Terrace.
“The view was that all the stakeholders that Alcoa deals with are all in the CBD area and therefore the company should be in that location,” the spokesperson said.
It is highly likely the new CBD office will be the new national head office, the spokesperson said.
The move will also remove some 27 positions from the human resources, IT and procurement areas. These positions would be outsourced to a group in India, which Alcoa’s United States operations have already utilised and found to be a high quality service, according to the spokesperson.
Alcoa, the world’s largest alumina producer, employs more than 1000 people at its Pinjarra alumina refinery, and the company said the new office site would better position Alcoa staff for further growth.
“The company has decided that it is definitely in WA for the long term, therefore some key staff should be in that [Pinjarra] location,” the spokesperson said.
Unions are reportedly disappointed about the company’s plan to outsource its offshore staff.
But the company said that, although there would be some job losses in the restructure, the proposed $1.5 billion expansion of the Wagerup refinery could potentially add up to 150 new permanent jobs.