Power crisis bites Guinea’s aluminium ambitions; 75kt supply to wait until after 2030

Guinea’s ambition to move beyond bauxite exports into alumina refining and aluminium smelting is running into a major electricity constraint. Producing about 1,000 MW of power at present, it needs another estimated 5,000–10,000 MW for industrialisation. While new alumina refineries could expand intermediate supply, the shortage of reliable electricity is likely to delay additional aluminium production capacity beyond 2030. The challenge emerges as aluminium traded at USD 3,008.5 per tonne, down 8.77 per cent over the month but up 8.43 per cent year on year. Guinea mined an estimated 150 million tonnes of bauxite in 2025, accounting for 34 per cent of global output of 440 million tonnes. Yet it produced only 360,000 tonnes of alumina, or 0.24 per cent of worldwide production of 150 million...