Alumina’s journey through 2025: A year known for ambition, friction and recalibration

The story of alumina in 2025 saw every up and down possible and at the same time raced to re-engineer itself to minimise shortfall. The global alumina industry moved in jolts with a plethora of incidents like capacity added in one geography while written off in another, environmental scrutiny tightening just as governments chased self-sufficiency, and supply chains re-routed not by demand, but by policy and power costs.

One of the key pieces of good news came from India. Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery reaching 5 million tonnes per annum capacity marked India’s shift in upstream posture. Alumina could no longer be tagged as a supporting input but as a core strategic asset for rapidly developing economies like the aforesaid nation. That intent sharpened with Vedanta’s INR 1 lakh crore aluminium-alumina expansion blueprint, positioning the country to reduce exposure to imported intermediates while anchoring domestic smelting growth.

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That same strategic instinct played out more forcefully in West Africa. Guinea’s Boké alumina refinery construction and the parallel Boffa alumina project ground-breaking reflected a long-anticipated pivot away from raw bauxite exports. For decades, Guinea supplied ore while value addition happened elsewhere. In 2025, that equation began to tilt. Refining capacity closer to the mine meant new freight flows, different risk profiles, and tighter control over supply, especially relevant for buyers accustomed to cheap, uninterrupted Guinean bauxite.

Southeast Asia reinforced this upstream rebalancing. Indonesia’s alumina production surge and refinery build-out continued to reshape regional trade, tightening bauxite availability for traditional importers and accelerating fears of demand destruction among exporters. Inalum’s Mempawah Phase II expansion lay emphasis on Jakarta’s determination to internalise value, even at the cost of short-term trade friction.

But while new capacity grabbed headlines, 2025 also delivered decisive exits. In Australia, Alcoa’s permanent closure of the Kwinana alumina refinery stressed the growing vulnerability of older, high-cost assets. Energy intensity, ageing infrastructure and tightening environmental standards converged into a simple conclusion that not all refineries are worth saving. That reality coexisted uncomfortably with Western Australia’s approval of the Worsley expansion, drawing attention to the fact that there were uneven economics even within a single jurisdiction.