Aluminum Under Parnassus

Trading on its past, Greece has long supported itself on tourism and an economic mixture of goats and grapes, fish and ships. More recently, the country has tried hard to develop modern industry, has more than tripled industrial exports to $25 million in the past five years. All along, a valuable asset lay hidden: bauxite, the basic raw material from which aluminum is made. Now a French-Greek-American combine called Aluminum of Greece has built the country's largest plant, a $135 million factory on the Bay of Antikyra in the shadow of Mount Parnassus. The plant not only brings Greece a whole new industry, aluminum, but by itself will double again the country's industrial exports by August.

Patience of Penelope. The combine is led by France's biggest aluminum maker, Pechiney, but substantial minority interests are held by Shipping Magnate Stavros Niarchos (21%), the U.S.'s Reynolds Metals (17%) and the Greek government (12%). Pechiney put up half the capital, has nine men on the 18-member board of directors, among them its own director-general, Pierre Jouven, who is chairman of the new company. What drew Pechiney to Greece, aside from the plentiful bauxite? Cheap labor, one of the Mediterranean's deepest harbors at Antikyra, and the Greek government's promise to supply low-cost electricity.

From the outset, the project has been plagued by headaches that would have strained the patience of Penelope. It took two years, for example, to assemble the site, and then the ground turned out to be full of archaeological treasures, whose salvage slowed construction. "In Greece," says General Manager Paul Lugagne Delpon, "you can't destroy a church, even if it's already destroyed." Tricky renegotiations over the price of electricity with three successive governments are only now nearing conclusion, with the company likely to wind up paying as much as $1,500,000 a year more for its power than it had originally bargained for. Even so, though the plant was ready to start production six months ago, the electricity wasn't available, at any price, because of interminable delays in laying cable connecting the factory to a new government-owned hydroelectric power station at Kremasta.

Homage to Aristotle. Now electricity has begun to flow, and the factory is in limited production. Its ultimate annual goal: 72,500 tons of aluminum worth $30 million, only 15% of which will be consumed in Greece. Already the plant has changed life for many of the local herdsmen and fishermen. After testing 8,000 of them for technical aptitudes, the company hired 800, is housing them for as little as $5.33 a month in a new town that boasts a well-stocked shopping center and a six-grade school. Though the company is exploiting assets that were unknown to the ancients, it has remembered to pay them fitting homage: streets in the new town bear such names as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

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