The US aluminum trihydrate market strengthened in September 2026 as downstream procurement, rising overseas production costs, and shipping bottlenecks supported prices. In contrast, Bosnia’s market faced a quarterly correction as European buyers drew on accumulated inventories and lower caustic soda costs eased manufacturing pressures, highlighting diverging regional price trends. US aluminum trihydrate market gains on demand and supply constraints US aluminum trihydrate prices increased 2.38% month over month in September, supported by purchases from wire and cable manufacturers, electrical infrastructure compounders, and electric vehicle (EV) component producers. Demand remained particularly resilient for applications involving low-smoke cable compounds and flame-retardant materials....
China-based China Aluminum International Engineering Co., Ltd. (CHALIECO) has won a bid for an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract valued at approximately USD 833 million for a proposed alumina project in Vietnam, adding to investment activity in the country’s mineral processing sector. The project, being developed by Binh Phuoc Ore Mining and Beneficiation Joint Stock Company, is designed to process 2.4 million tonnes of alumina annually. The proposed contract is valued at around CNY 5.595 billion (USD 839.04 million), with completion expected within 27 months of the contract’s effective date. CHALIECO to oversee turnkey refinery development Under the proposed turnkey arrangement, CHALIECO’s responsibilities will cover the full project delivery process, from...
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Vedanta Resources Plc reported that it received approvals for expansion of its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha, and inked contracts with Emirates Global Aluminium for bauxite. The present capacity of the refinery is 2 million tonnes per annum which are expected to expand by 2021, said CEO Ajay Dixit to Economic Times India. The total investment required for this expansion would be INR 5,600 crore. According to the report, the Anil Agarwal-led natural resource major is also eyeing 6 GW of stressed thermal power plants for captive use. Dixit confirmed the company obtained all the required approvals for the expansion, while Sanjeev Chopra, Odisha principal secretary industries said the single window clearance was given last year. Dixit also alleged the local protests that had...
After the publication of Q1 2018 results, Nalco CMD TK Chand said alumina business is pushing up Nalco profitability. He said the PBT from alumina segment stood at INR 1125 crore. Nalco drives the alumina export segment in India every year being the top alumina producer and exporter. Nalco registered more than 100% capacity utilisation in Q1. The company is planning to produce 50,000 tonne more than the capacity in 2018. That will be a big boost to profitability and will boost alumina export further. We are looking at the quarter on quarter alumina export trend by India in 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. In Q1 CY 2018, India exported 377, 189 tonnes of alumina. For the entire year, the country is estimated to export 1. 5 million tonnes of alumina. The total export volume for alumina...
Alcoa workers in Western Australia alumina refineries have walked out indefinitely over an enterprise agreement dispute with the aluminium maker, the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) said on Wednesday. The strike comes after Alcoa applied to Australia’s workplace regulator to terminate its current agreement, affecting around 1,500 of its 1,600 workers at its three alumina refineries and two bauxite mines in the state, the union said. The refineries account for around 9.3 million tonnes of capacity or some 8 percent of the world’s alumina supply, with the market for the aluminium-making ingredient already tight after sanctions on global aluminium maker UC Rusal and the partial closure of Norsk Hydro’s plant in Brazil. The walkout has not impacted production, Alcoa said. The union said it...
Shanghai Metals Market has recently unveiled a roundup of the total production of base metals including alumina and aluminium in China for the month of July, after surveying major producers in the market to obtain first-hand information for calculation. China’s total output of alumina in July recorded an increase by 2.4 per cent from the contemporary period of previous year to stand at 5.91 million tonnes, while the daily average output plunged by 4.1 per cent to 191,000 tonnes. This decline in daily average output could be primarily because of the production cut and refinery maintenance at some of the major producers in China including Chalco Shanxi, Sanmenxia Kaiman, and Shanxi Huaxing on tight bauxite supplies in the market. However, the country is hopeful about its production in...
According to the report from China’s Environment Ministry in late March, the country had decided to strengthen its fight against persistent smog and pollution by further empowering and restructuring its environment ministry and drawing up a new three-year action plan which promises tougher targets on industrial polluters. As part of its new remit, the ministry already started environmental checks from June 11, 2018, expanding over more cities and regions including Beijing, Tianjin, and 26 cities in Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan provinces including Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Langfang, Baoding, and many others. Two hundred teams with a total of around 18,000 inspectors and support staff had been sent out, triple the size of the workforce during the past winter heating season. According to...
UC RUSAL, a leading global aluminium producer, announced its results for the three and six months ended 30 June 2018. Rusal alumina production for the quarter and the first half of the year was stable. Alumina production for Q2 2018 stood at 1,924 million tonnes, almost flat YoY. The six months ended 30 June 2018 recorded alumina production of 3.816 million tonnes, comparing with 3.817 million tonnes for the six months ended 30 June 2017. In May 2018 alumina production at Friguia refinery was restarted in Guinea at half the total capacity. Total sales volume for alumina stood at 953,000 tonnes for H1 2018 compared to about 1 million tonne in H1 2017. The revenue stood at US$ 447 million in comparison to US$ 364 million in H1 2017. The increase in revenue despite lower volume was primarily...
Spot alumina price saw some unprecedented highs in 2018 first half and doubled to over $700 per tonne as the market showed panic reaction to U.S. sanctions on Oleg Deripaska and Rusal entities in April. The supply scenario was disrupted by two major happenings. First, the fifty per cent capacity closure in Hydro’s Alunorte refinery in Brazil in March on the issue of bauxite residue pond leakage, followed by US sanctions on Rusal. The sanctions put the future of Rusal’s Aughinish alumina plant in doubt, which is Europe's largest alumina refinery in Ireland and a major alumina asset of RUSAL contributing about 30 per cent of alumina produced in the EU. Aughinish won a reprieve as the U.S. Administration extended the sanctions deadline till October and currently negotiations are on for a...
After almost 88 years, Liaoning province in China was about to home an alumina refinery, but unfortunately, the project plan got cancelled by the city of Chaoyang after public consultation. The refinery was proposed to process bauxite ore into 10 million tonnes of alumina every year and supersede Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte project in Brazil as the world’s biggest alumina refinery. Liaoning was home to China’s first aluminium smelter, at Fushun; date back to 1930s, after which there was no existence of any alumina production until now, neither at Liaoning nor at its neighbouring provinces like Heilongjiang and Jilin, according to the data revealed by the National Bureau of Statistics. As per the information published on the website of the Chaoyang government on Wednesday, August 1, 2018, the...
The announcement that the US may consider dropping severe sanctions against Rusal could be resulted in easing threat to up to 1,000 jobs at Limerick’s Aughinish Alumina. Aughinish Alumina, owned by Russian giant UC Rusal, had been under threat since April 2018, when the US Treasury Department had announced harsh sanctions against the company, along with a handful of other Russian aluminium companies. In April, the US Treasury had granted time till 23 rd of October to Rusal’s American customers to comply with sanctions, and also said it would consider lifting sanctions if Rusal’s major shareholder Oleg Deripaska ceded control of the company. But now, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the department would be opening to removing Rusal from the list of companies which were...
Altech Chemicals Limited announces that it has completed clearing the ~4Ha site for its proposed high purity alumina (HPA) plant in Johor, Malaysia. Site clearance commenced earlier this month following the execution of the stage 1 construction agreement for the HPA plant with appointed German engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor, SMS group (SMS). Clearing of the site predominantly involved the removal of secondary re-growth vegetation; this activity was the first task in the detailed schedule of works for stage 1 construction. The completion of site clearance is another key development milestone for the Company’s proposed Malaysian HPA plant. The Company’s HPA plant site is located in a section of the Tanjung Langsat Industrial Complex in Johor that is designated...
Almatis, a global leader in production and supply of premium alumina and alumina-based products, announced to set up a new Tabular Alumina plant in Falta, West Bengal, with the aim to expand its business across Asia. Almatis was previously a part of global aluminium major Alcoa but now owned by one of the largest private pension funds in Turkey OYAK since September 2015. Almatis’ India business is based in Falta with a processing plant that has been seeing steady growth since 1995. The company is now extending its production facility with an expectation to meet its Indian customers’ demands, providing supply security in the growing market, an official statement issued on July 25. The company is aiming big on India’s market given the rising demand for Tabular Alumina, driven by growing...
Norsk Hydro CEO Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said on Tuesday, July 24, that despite talks between the company and Brazilian regulators about full production recommencement at Alunorte alumina refinery, no timeline has been set yet on the final ramp-up. "We do not know exactly what it will take for the authorities to lift the embargo, and the timing to get back to 100% is still uncertain," he said during the company's quarterly earnings call. Since February 2018, Norsk Hydro, the major owner of Alunorte, is following Brazilian regulators’ order to operate at 50 per cent cut production rate, as authorities suspected potential leaks from bauxite residue deposits during heavy rainfall. Due to this, the company has also reduced the production capacity at its Paragominas bauxite mine and Albras...
According to China customs data, alumina export from China stood at 118,000 tonnes in June, up 24 per cent from May’s export of 89,999 tonnes. This marks the highest level since the year 2002. The exports during May and June, at 208,000 tonnes were in line with SMM’s expectation. Moreover, with the reopening of export windows, new export orders for alumina were heard to be signed this month, which is likely to create an impact in the export data for July and August. Separate, China imported 50,000 tonnes of alumina in June, bringing the net export to 68,000 tonnes last month. As logistics source with operations in China confirmed, Chinese traders were stockpiling alumina to increase the export volume and reap profits from record prices for spot cargoes, attributed to US sanctions of UC...
Hydro released it Q2 2018 results reporting an underlying EBIT of NOK 2713 million, down 7% from the same period in 2017 and 14% QoQ. 50% production at Alunorte, Paragominas and Albras and higher costs affected the total results considerably. Underlying EBIT for Bauxite & Alumina decreased significantly compared to the second quarter of 2017. The Underlying EBIT for the quarter stood at NOK 364 million, down 45% from NOK 662 million in Q2 2017 and down 51% from NOK 741 million in Q1 2018. The EBIT for H1 2018 also drops to NOK 1,104 million from NOK 1418 million in H1 2017. The negative results were attributed to the reduced production at both Alunorte and Paragominas, whose outputs were curtailed to 50%. Higher raw material prices partly offset by higher realized alumina sales prices in...
Ireland is one of the leading export economies in the world houses Rusal-operated Aughinish alumina refinery. Located in a rural part of Ireland, Aughinish refinery is the sole producer of alumina in the country and one of the most efficient alumina facilities globally, with an annual production capacity of 1,915,000 tonnes. If we look at Ireland’s export trend, we can see that it was steady in the calendar year 2017 with a continued growth. According to the global export-import data, Ireland exported total 2203762 tonnes in 2017. France was the highest importer obtaining 678194 tonnes, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, and the Russian Federation that imported 394618 tonnes, 256821 tonnes, and 238655 tonnes, respectively. The total export revenue for Ireland had recorded at US$646...
According to the international export-import statistics, the estimated alumina export from China in 2018 is 177,996 tonnes, while the expected revenue to be at US$ 324 million. In the first quarter of 2018, the total alumina export from China was 59,548 tonnes and the revenue earned was US$63 million, while the contemporary period of previous year had recorded 119,126 tonnes of alumina export, yielding US$ 65 million of revenue. The chart above shows a comparison of China's export in Q1 and Q2 of 2017 and 2018. However, the figure increased in the second quarter of 2018, as China exported 50,887 tonnes of alumina and earned revenue of US$80 million, in contrast to 36, 190 tonnes of alumina export and US$46 million of revenue in the second quarter of 2017. The chart above shows a...
In 2017, Aughinish Alumina filed a controversial proposal to blast and extract rock near the bauxite residue disposal area, or the red mud ponds, to make a pit for use in the plant operations. Limerick council gave green light for rock 'blasting' at Aughinish plant. However, the proposal was brought under review by An Bord Pleanala after the council’s permission was appealed by a local group. An Bord Pleanala has however, refused a request for an oral hearing into the proposal to develop the pit at the site. The request for a hearing was lodged by a local protester, Pat Geoghegan, who hoped to get one similar to the hearing that took place last year for an Irish Cement proposal. The board said that it will make a decision on the appealed rock-blasting plans by August 27 2018. However,...
Altech Chemicals Ltd has signed the final agreement to construct stage I of its high purity alumina (HPA) plant in Johor, Malaysia with its EPC contractor SMS Group GmbH (SMS) of Germany. The scope of work is valued at around $10 million and includes bulk earthworks, foundation piling and the construction of retaining walls. The agreement also covers construction of underground stormwater/process discharge tanks and the site electrical sub-station structure and a maintenance workshop. The workshop will be used as construction site offices during stage II of the HPA plant construction process. The plant will use the kaolin deposit at Meckering in Western Australia as raw materials and produce HPA directly from the clay. Altech has completed a Final Investment Decision Study for the...
