AlCircle News Edited By "Pratyusha Chatterjee"
A writer with 5+ years of experience in the communication industry, Pratyusha Chatterjee has indulged in content from the business, lifestyle, travel industries and more. Apart from news and content, Pratyusha is immensely fond of participating in cultural events and managing them.
Punch-ing above its weight: Tata Motors to unveil the Tata Punch EV Facelift today
Today’s the day. Tata Motors has officially rolls out the refreshed Tata Punch EV, and it’s not just a cosmetic dab of powder. It’s a sharper, tech-smarter, range-confident upgrade to one of India’s most successful electric micro-SUVs. Visually, the facelift keeps its upright, boxy charm but adds polish where it counts as suggested by multiple industry reports. The front fascia looks cleaner with a sleeker closed-off grille, updated bumper detailing and sharper LED DRLs. New aero-optimised alloy wheels give it a slightly more premium stance, while fresh colour options — including the eye-catching Sunlit Yellow and copper-toned accents — dial up the personality. It’s familiar, but fresher. Quirky, but more grown-up. Step inside and the real glow-up becomes obvious. Higher trims are...
Hydro maintains 16th percentile cost position with 2.1 Mt aluminium production capacity despite downstream retrenchment
Norsk Hydro has grabbed headlines during the entire 2025 calendar year for its job cuts, plant closure and among other relatively positive news pieces. And this time, it is the financial results that has pulled eyeballs and rightfully so as the global business has managed to affirm positive financial outcome as announced previously while taking all those tough calls. Hydro closed 2025 in a year defined less by expansion in volumes and more by structural adjustment. The company delivered financial resilience despite weaker downstream demand, executed workforce reductions and plant closure proposals in Europe, reduced capital expenditure guidance, and simultaneously advanced selective investments in renewable power, recycling and low-carbon metal. Adjusted EBITDA reached NOK 28.9 billion...
790 Mt of emissions and counting: China’s 18 tCO₂e aluminium production in a 1.5°C world
China is greening its aluminium, a trending statement for the past year. But while greening its onshore production, is it dumping its carbon footprint elsewhere? China's primary aluminium production (exceeding 44 million tonnes in 2025, while some report the production volume has exceeded 45 million tonnes) heavily relies on coal-fired electricity, but is transitioning toward renewable energy, with estimates suggesting green energy (hydro, solar, wind) to account for roughly 15 to 20 per cent of the industry's power mix, concentrated in regions like Yunnan. While some regions utilise hydropower, coal still accounts for 70-80 per cent of power generation for the primary aluminium production sector. The government aims to increase renewable energy usage to over 30 per cent for primary...
Global aluminium capacity to grow 4.58% with an additional 20.9 Mt coming by end-2026
中文翻译附于新闻末尾，敬请继续阅读。 Though a plethora of speed breakers hit the aluminium industry in recent times, global primary aluminium operating capacity is set to rise sharply. SMM, through one of its recently held webinars, projects an increase of about 20.9 million tonnes by the end of 2026, taking total operating capacity to roughly 77.16 million tonnes, with Indonesia among the largest incremental contributors. Global primary aluminium production in 2025 grew marginally to approximately 73.78 million tonnes, up from 73.01 million tonnes in 2024, representing a 5-year low in growth rate. China, holding a 45 million tonne capacity cap, operated at nearly 97 per cent capacity (approx. 43.9 million tonnes) in 2025, limiting global growth, with the market facing continued supply deficits. The...
_0_0.jpg)
Indonesia’s aluminium industry to be hit by 317% inflated power hunger, with a potential 9.5 GW demand by 2028
Indonesia’s aluminium industry is growing fast, tackling all the stalled sites and upgrading technology at processing units. The RKAB structure has made sure that the ore and the subsequent production process are streamlined. But what about the electrons? Globally, electricity alone accounts for roughly 30-35 per cent of the cost of producing one tonne of primary aluminium. By 2028, Indonesia’s primary aluminium smelting capacity is projected to rise from 0.75 million tonnes per annum in 2024 to 3.13 million tonnes in 2028, a 317 per cent increase in just four years. That expansion is the final leg of Jakarta’s downstream pivot: converting bauxite reserves into integrated alumina and aluminium output. But the decisive constraint is neither geology nor capital. It is power. For the global...
Global EV sales 2025: Volume expansion up 20%, but growth paths diverge sharply by regions
The 2025 global EV sales data point to a newly aligned market than even two years earlier. Growth is no longer limited by consumer acceptance or product availability. Instead, it is being rationed by three quantifiable constraints, such as entry price dispersion of more than EUR 20,000 (USD 23,600) between major regions, infrastructure expansion lagging BEV stock growth by a factor of two in key markets, and abrupt regulation withdrawals that can erase a quarter’s worth of demand in a single quarter. Based on cumulative data through October and full-year estimations, total EV sales in 2025 are estimated at approximately 20-21 million units, up around 20-23 per cent year-on-year compared with 2024, with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) at the core of the expansion. BEV sales across the 40...
Ball Corporation’s 2025 performance: Volume-led growth, margin discipline and a reset capital structure
Ball Corporation exited fiscal 2025 as a structurally leaner aluminium packaging company, delivering double-digit revenue growth, region-wide volume expansion and record free cash flow, while headline earnings declined from an aerospace-inflated 2024 base. The year marked a reset in Ball’s earnings quality, balance-sheet profile and capital allocation framework. On a US GAAP basis, full-year 2025 net sales rose 11.6 per cent year-on-year to USD 13.16 billion, compared with USD 11.80 billion in 2024. Growth accelerated into the year’s close, with fourth-quarter revenue increasing 16.3 per cent Y-o-Y to USD 3.35 billion, reflecting higher shipment volumes and favourable price/mix across regions. Earnings optics distort Y-o-Y comparison Reported net earnings attributable to Ball Corporation...
Gränges AB posts fifth straight year of record profit as volume growth offsets pricing, FX and scrap pressure
Gränges closed 2025 with its strongest operating performance on record, extending its streak of all-time-high operating profit to a fifth consecutive year, even as currency headwinds, weaker HVAC demand and tighter scrap margins weighed on profitability across regions. The year was defined by aggressive market share gains, capacity ramp-ups in Asia, and volume-led growth rather than margin expansion. For the full year ended December 2025, overall aluminium sales volume rose 21.9 per cent year-on-year to 616.6 thousand tonnes from 505.8 thousand tonnes in 2024. Net sales increased 20.7 per cent to SEK 28.36 billion (USD 2.73 billion), despite a cumulative negative foreign exchange impact of SEK 1.69 billion (USD 163 million). Adjusted operating profit edged up 2.7 per cent year-on-year to...
Aluminium price forecast: $3,000 ascent in January demands a global price recalculation
The London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium contract entered 2026 with a bang of a hike, as in early January, the three-month contract crossed USD 3,000 per tonne for the first time since 2022, trading at USD 3,015.50 before extending gains later in the month. The move was not the product of speculative momentum alone. Back in 2022 production and energy costs, China’s production cap and Russia-Ukraine’s war imparted their fair share of spices into the price hike scenario. But this time, it reflected a convergence of constrained supply, tightening physical availability and US and EU’s policy-driven rigidity, consequently leading to altered price expectations for the rest of 2026. For the global aluminium value-chain 2026 outlook, get our exclusive report “ Global ALuminium Industry Outlook...
India-Canada’s energy reset with signing of joint statement: Trade, gas, nuclear and the math behind
The first two days of India Energy Week (IEW) 2026 were not short on announcements, but one development cut through the noise — India and Canada quietly reset their energy relationship, anchoring it in trade, supply security and investment logic rather than political symbolism. Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with Global ALuminium Industry Outlook 2026 across the value chain The revival of the India-Canada ministerial energy dialogue and the signing of a joint statement between India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Canada’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources came against a backdrop of tightening global energy markets and an increasingly explicit Indian strategy, one that treats hydrocarbons, gas, nuclear fuel and clean energy as parallel growth...
India’s transport energy balance: why petroleum, diesel and electricity must move in parallel, not in opposition
India’s transport transition is often framed as a contest between internal combustion engines and electric mobility. The data, along with the lived reality of energy demand, suggest something far less binary. As Dr Chanchal Samanta, DGM of Bharat Petroleum, made clear in his remarks at the ongoing India Energy Week 2026, India is not facing a fuel choice problem. It is managing a growth problem. Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with Global Aluminium Industry Outlook 2026 across the value chain Electric vehicles are rightfully positioned as the sustainable endpoint for transport. But for a country like India, the energy system is expanding faster than substitution can realistically occur. “One is growth, and one is total growth,” Samanta said, pointing to the gap the...
Metro Mining’s 2025: tidy execution, but how durable is the payoff?
Metro Mining finished 2025 with a set of neat operational checkboxes, including a reported 6.2 million wet metric tonnes (WMT) shipped for the calendar year (December volumes were 543,000 WMT), a year-end cash position of AUD 57 million, and the grinding down of junior liabilities that management says improved net leverage. To know the aluminium market outlook for 2026 and beyond, get an access to our report: Global Aluminium Industry Outlook 2026 Those outcomes matter because Metro is a single-asset producer operating from Cape York’s Bauxite Hills, where the operation’s optionality is tightly tethered to a single logistics route and a finite reserve base. Metro’s own materials put Bauxite Hills’ reserve at roughly 83.2-89.5 million tonnes and total resources in the c.118Mt range, enough...
Swisstek Aluminium opens a new design studio to rev architectural solutions
Swisstek Aluminium, a leading Sri Lankan aluminium extrusion manufacturer in Sri Lanka and part of Vallibel One PLC, has opened a dedicated ‘Design Studio’ to support modern aluminium solutions for both homes and commercial building projects. Uncovered at Swisstek’s headquarters on Nawala Road in Colombo 05, the new studio is positioned as a platform to aggravate engagement with architects, designers, developers, and fabricators. It will distinctively equip design support, technical consultation, and visualisation tools tailored to contemporary architectural aluminium applications. Swisstek Aluminium offers a wide range of aluminium extrusions and architectural systems, such as sliding and swing doors, curtain walls, folding systems, glass partitions, and louvres. These products are...
Japan’s Q1 2026 aluminium premium of $195 likely to continue in the same bracket in Q2
A single smelter has had immense impact on the global trade scenario. Mozal’s closure hit the CBAM impacted nations, tightened the global aluminium supply chain scenario and now is influencing the Japan’s Q1 2026 aluminium premium with around a 127 per cent hike quarter-on-quarter. After a year of buyer resistance and sliding settlements, the country’s benchmark aluminium premium has snapped back sharply. But is Mozal the only inhibiting factor for Japan? And why are analysts anticipating similar premium bracket for Q2 2026? Japan’s quarterly premium for imported primary aluminium surged to USD 195 per tonne CIF for January-March 2026 (Q1), a jump from the roughly USD 86 per tonne settled for Q4 2025. The market spent most of last year defined by weak demand, buyer pushback and collapsing...
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...
Can US rebar duties, in reality, become aluminium’s next demand engine?
The US’s latest countervailing duty action against rebar imports from Algeria, Egypt and Vietnam is definitely a steel story. But in the layer under, it is shaping up to be a structural aluminium demand event for the North American construction ecosystem. In January 2026, the US Department of Commerce imposed preliminary countervailing duties of 72.94 per cent on Algerian rebar, 29.51 per cent on Egyptian material and 1.08 per cent on Vietnamese shipments, on top of the blanket 50 per cent steel and aluminium tariff regime. The move followed investigations launched in mid-2025 after domestic producers alleged heavy subsidisation and dumping. Also read: Role of energy prices 2025 and outlook in aluminium’s next 25 years, considering three likely distinct scenarios The immediate effect...
Role of energy prices 2025 and outlook in aluminium’s next 25 years, considering three likely distinct scenarios
Call it destiny or plain arithmetic, aluminium’s decarbonisation story now hinges on energy prices. The Hall-Héroult smelting process is evidently electricity-intensive, so swings in oil, gas, coal and (crucially) electricity prices feed directly into producers’ margins, and definitely into the calculus for switching smelters to renewables or cleaner fuels. Also read: Global bauxite production refused to blink in 2025, leading to an output exceeding 475 MT Starting with the numbers The IEA’s World Energy Outlook provides the baseline price paths used by markets and planners. Crude oil averaged about USD 79 per barrel in 2024, and under the IEA scenarios, oil will range roughly between USD 33-106 per barrel by 2035, depending on the policy pathway (Stated Policies Scenario vs Current...
US bets $450 million to save its last alumina refinery and rebuild gallium from scratch
The US has launched an industrial tactic to save its last domestic alumina refinery while building out critical gallium capacity, conclusively deemed a dual move with strategic importance of both feedstock and advanced materials for defence, aerospace and high-tech sectors. Washington has committed USD 450 million in public and private funding to revive the Atlantic Alumina Company’s (ATALCO’s) Gramercy, Louisiana facility, securing alumina production and adding what could become America’s first large-scale gallium production circuit. Also read: Post-Venezuela’s capture, 7 countries tremble, fearing for their independence and their reserves The Department of Defense (DoD) is set to invest USD 150 million in preferred equity in ATALCO and the additional USD 300 million will be paired with...
