Africa’s primary aluminium production from January to November 2024 sees a 1.5% dip

In eleven months of 2024, Africa has produced 1.44 million tonnes of primary aluminium, compared to 1.462 million tonnes a year ago. That reflects a year-on-year downfall of 1.5 per cent, in contrast to the 2.87 per cent hike in global primary metal output.  Consequently, the country’s contribution to the world’s primary aluminium production has dipped from 2.26 per cent to 2.16 per cent this year.

Several factors contributed to this downfall, such as irregular power supply hindering smelting operations, lack of investments in new smelting facilities or upgrading existing ones, increased prices of alumina hiking operational costs, and so on.

According to the International Aluminium Institute, Africa in November 2024 produced 133,000 tonnes of primary aluminium, down by 2.92 per cent from 137,000 tonnes in October. On a year-on-year calculation, the output stood unchanged.

The M-o-M drop, particularly in November, was due to one less operation day, given the daily average production remained steady at 4,400 tonnes.

In the full year 2023, primary aluminium production was 1.594 million tonnes, meaning the last month of this year would need to produce more than 154,000 to beat last year’s output.