*

Alcoa ( AA ) says no visibility on orders past the first-half

*

Company has no plans to build a new U.S. smelter

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Says difficult to have electro-intensive business if

Spain's

grid is unstable

(Recasts and writes through)

By Melanie Burton

MELBOURNE, May 1 (Reuters) - Aluminium producer Alcoa ( AA )

said on Thursday its order book for the second quarter

remains robust and it has yet to see a drop in orders related to

U.S. tariffs, while also noting that this week's power outage in

Spain posed risks to its business there.

Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed

a flat 25% tariff on aluminum imports "without exceptions or

exemptions" in a bid to lift U.S. production of the metal.

"Our first quarter order book was strong. Our second quarter

order book remains strong. So we have yet to see a fall off in

orders associated with the tariffs," CEO William Oplinger said

at a mining event in Melbourne.

"When we're talking to our customers, they're uncertain

about the future. So we just don't have good insight much past

the first half now."

Alcoa ( AA ) said at its first-quarter earnings call last month

that it expects U.S. tariffs on aluminium imports from Canada to

cost the company about $90 million in the second quarter.

Oplinger said Alcoa ( AA ) supported Trump's vision of a

competitive manufacturing environment in the U.S. and the best

way to achieve that would be to make sure Canadian aluminium

gets to the United States.

The U.S. is about 4 million tonnes short of aluminium each

year and lacks economic deposits of the raw material, bauxite to

produce aluminium, he added.

Alcoa ( AA ) does not have any immediate plans to build any

smelters in the U.S. which typically take 5-7 years.

It would take seven new U.S. aluminium smelters to produce

the 4 million tonnes, costing an estimated $35 billion, he said.

Alcoa ( AA ), the largest aluminium producer in the U.S., has a market

value of $6.5 billion, he pointed out.

"So this concept of creating manufacturing in the near term

is simply not going to happen in primary aluminum."

The as-yet-unexplained power outage that rocked Spain and

Portugal this week has raised the risks for Alcoa's ( AA ) San Ciprián

aluminium complex in Spain, Oplinger said.

"At this point, we don't yet have an answer to what happened

to the energy in Spain, and in my view, we will take some days

to evaluate the risks associated with further losses of power,"

he said.

"If the grid doesn't understand what happened, it is very

difficult to have an electro-intensive business in a place that

can't guarantee that the electricity will stay on."

Alcoa ( AA ) is conducting a review to assess damage at the plant.

Oplinger said the facility's smelter was in the process of

restarting, which was 8-10% complete.

Production at the plant was curtailed in 2021 due to high

power prices and it has been in the process of being restarted

with a full ramp-up expected by October.