China's automotive aluminium alloy market size slated for 20% per annum growth

In a recently published report, aluminium and aluminium alloy has been together termed as the future of China automotive lightweight material (metals) industry.

The key findings of the report are:

- China's consumption of automotive aluminium alloy hit 300,000 tons in 2014. The supply and demand of aluminium alloy automotive sheet, on the other side, stayed at a low level.

- The high-end mainstream market was dominated by Novelis, Kobelco, Aleris and other foreign brands. In October 2014, Novelis (Changzhou) put its 120,000 tons per annum automotive aluminium sheet/strip project into operation, making China's automotive aluminium alloy sheet capacity reach 185,000 tons.

- Kobelco Aleris, Zhongwang Group and other companies will put automotive aluminium sheet projects involving over 400,000 tons into operation in China in 2015-2016, then China's automotive aluminium sheet capacity will attain up to 550,000 tons per annum.

- In the next few years, China's automotive aluminium alloy market size is expected to grow at a rate of about 20% in the wake of the enhanced trend of automotive lightweight.

However, Chinese aluminium alloy processing enterprises are still found to be weak at technologies, and they mainly target popular economical cars and has limited demand for aluminium alloy cars. Therefore, in the past few years, although China's automobile industry has developed rapidly, the aluminium alloy automotive sheet industry of the country has evolved slowly with the capacity growing sluggishly.