The leading aluminium event in the Middle East, the annual ARABAL conference, hosted by Kuwait Industries, took place in Kuwait from 11 to 13 November. The event was officially inaugurated by H.E. Khaled AlRoudan, Minister of Commerce and Industry.
ARABAL 2018 conference highlighted the success of the Middle East Aluminium industry in last three decades and sought to find innovations for a sustainable aluminium industry in future.
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Commenting on the event and the industry, ARABAL Chairman Mr Mohammed Al Naki said, “The GCC has been looking for ways to diversify its industry and income and aluminium is now a key sector for the region. When we started ARABAL 35 years ago there were only three smelters and production was extremely low. Now we have 6 smelters and aluminium production has increased to 10% of global output. A great achievement. You can see from the level of participants at ARABAL, the networking and new partnerships being formed here, that this will really have a positive effect on the industry in the coming years.”
Over 600 visitors, committee members, delegates, exhibitors and speakers from the aluminium sector and allied sector gathered together for business networking and for sharing information and ideas. The conference discussed a number of topics like sustainability, industry dynamics, trade wars, industry dynamics, market outlook for the upstream and downstream aluminium in a series of presentations, keynotes, workshops and panel discussions. The event saw representation from 25 different countries.
“ARABAL has established itself as a good meeting place for networking and has a strong brand name within the industry. The Gulf is a key area for the aluminium industry. It is good to come together and share information both on the technical and commercial side,” speaker Hans Erik Vatne, CTO of Norsk Hydro ASA said.
Participants of the event agreed that the success of ARABAL lies in bringing in panels of experts to discuss the most important developments in this growing industry on a single platform.
Laith Al-Hindawi, Aluminium Growth Director, GE said, “ARABAL is important as it gives people a forum to get up to date with the latest innovations and developments. Being able to know what is going on around the World and in this region. It is incredibly important networking event to share knowledge and opinions. It gives you a much broader vision of the aluminium industry as a whole.”
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