Bahrain’s aluminium wire exports continued to gain momentum in the second quarter of 2026, with shipments rising significantly compared with the corresponding periods of 2025 and 2024. The country exported 80,895 tonnes of aluminium wire in Q2 2026, taking its total shipments during the first half of the year to 143,518 tonnes. The export data covers aluminium wire under HS code 7605, excluding stranded wire, cables, plaited bands and similar products, electrically insulated wires and strings for musical instruments. Export volume registers strong Y-o-Y growth Comparing the quarterly figures, Bahrain’s aluminium wire export volume increased by 23.76 per cent Y-o-Y in Q2 2026, against 65,366 tonnes shipped during Q2 2025. The latest quarterly volume also marked a considerable rise from Q2...
India-based KEC International Limited is pushing ahead with Phase II of its aluminium conductor capacity expansion, even as a difficult second quarter dragged consolidated profit down. The Q2 FY27 investor presentation, dated November 2, lists the expansion as underway in its Cables & Conductors business, one of the few segments that grew in the quarter. The update comes over a year after KEC’s commissioning of the first phase of the plant in Vadodara in February 2025, marking an investment of about INR 600 million (USD 6.33 million). The company has not disclosed the capacity to be added, the investment or a completion date. Explore AL Circle’s report ALuminium Wires & Cables - Insights & Forecast to 2030 for insights into aluminium applications, industry developments and opportunities...
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Beck Aluminum Racine will relocate and expand to a former manufacturing plant at 7505 Durand Ave. and add 25 new jobs, the building owner has announced. Beck, 1349 23rd St., executed a long-term lease for the 192,000-square-foot building on Durand which was previously a Bosch Rexroth manufacturing plant. Bosch closed the plant in 2002 with the loss of more than 200 local jobs. The selection of the building, which is currently called the Mount Pleasant Complex, followed a search across the Midwest for a new plant to replace its current plant, according to Phoenix Investors, a Milwaukee-based commercial real estate firm. Beck settled on the Durand Avenue location based on several factors, Phoenix said in a news release, including support and financial assistance from Racine County Economic...
China exported 300,000 mt of aluminum semis in March, down 6.25% YoY and 23.08% MoM, customs data showed. The SHFE/LME aluminum price drifted higher, unfavorable for aluminum semis exports. Moreover, falling overseas aluminum premiums made Chinese aluminum semis less attractive, another drag on outbound shipment. Extrusion exports grew 9.1% YoY to 50,400 mt, and foil exports increased 8.55% YoY to 74,300 mt. However, exports of plate, sheet and strip dropped 9.97% YoY to 164,200 mt. A portion of the aluminum plate/sheet and strip exports are token exports, mostly subject to the changing SHFE/LME aluminum price ratio and overseas aluminum premiums.
Japan’s Tobu Railway has appointed Kawasaki Heavy Industries on April 22 to supply eight three-car 500 series EMUs with aluminium bodies to be used in the limited express services in the Tokyo region. The 1.5kV dc 1067mm-gauge trains will enter service in spring 2017, initially on the 41km Tobu Sky Tree Line from to Tokyo Asakusa to Miyashiro in Saitama prefecture. Styling of the 500 series has been supervised by industrial designer Mr Ken Okuyama and the exterior is intended to reflect the design of the world's tallest tower, the 634m Tokyo Sky Tree. Each three-car set will be formed of two powered driving vehicles and one unpowered intermediate trailer, seating a total of 161 passengers. The aluminium-bodied vehicles will be 20m long and 2.87m wide. The driving cars are equipped with...
The Aluminum Extruders Council (AEC) released the following statement on China’s decision to remove export duties on several downstream aluminum products. Jeff Henderson, AEC Director of Operations, and director of the Council’s Fair Trade Committee remarked: “The decision by the Chinese Government to remove export duties on downstream aluminum products is troubling for the global aluminum market and is outside the scope of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) findings on rare earths, tungsten, and molybdenum. This action represents a targeted attempt to use foreign markets to relieve pressure on China’s struggling aluminum producers. Over the last decade, producers outside of China have made painful adjustments to market conditions by rationalizing operations – closing facilities, worker...
Although Honda has yet to reveal the intimate details about the new Acura NSX hybrid supercar, in the latest SAE World Congress the company revealed some interesting features about its body construction including a new aluminium technology used in the car for better rigidity. Honda claims, NSX will be the world’s first vehicle to apply the process of aluminum ablation casting to produce large ultra-rigid nodes or junction points within the crush zones of the body. The ablation nodes will have sockets into which aluminum extrusions will be inserted and then MIG-welded as part of the spaceframe. The ablation castings also allow Honda to use traditional aluminum castings at other strategic locations in the spaceframe and as the primary mounting points for suspension and power-unit...
Kaiser Aluminum Corporation today announced that, as a result of the definitive expiration of its obligation to make annual variable contributions to the union voluntary employees' beneficiary association (the "Union VEBA") for any period after September 2017, it has removed from the Company's consolidated balance sheet the Union VEBA's plan assets and liabilities, and related deferred tax liabilities and accumulated other comprehensive income amounts. Additionally, the Company has recorded a liability of $45 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 to reflect the estimated remaining annual variable contributions that could be made to the Union VEBA through September 2017. As previously announced, on January 28, 2015, members of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber,...
Ball Corporation is honoring seven of its 58 global manufacturing plants with the R. David Hoover Sustainability Award for making a substantial impact toward Ball's sustainability goals, both inside the plant and within their communities, in 2014. The annual award recognizes one plant in each region of Ball's global beverage can business and its global food and household products business for the best overall sustainability improvement, as well as greatest impact in their local community. The most sustainable plants of 2014 and examples of their operational achievements from last year include: Global Metal Beverage Packaging • Wallkill, New York (Beverage Cans, North America): Reduced its total recordable incident rate by 66 percent. • Belgrade, Serbia (Ball Packaging Europe): Reduced its...
Jawaharlal Nehru Aluminium Research Development and Design Centre (JNARDDC), is organizing one day Meet on Aluminium extrusions in strategic applications and challenges ahead. The theme of this workshop is to identify strategic applications of aluminium extruded profiles in sectors such as defence, aerospace, automobile etc and share ideas related to aluminium extrusion of hard alloys, potential users, equipment selection suitable for this application, R & D focus for port hole die development to minimize trial and error methods. The Meet will provide a common platform for participants to discuss about technology of aluminium extrusion, the problems faced, the role of simulation in product design changes from end users in the aluminium industry. The target audience for the Meet are...
Much of the aluminum currently available in the United States is of shapes and profiles that are less than ideal for U.S. fabricators, prompting traders to sell it at discounts and raising concerns about the availability of standard shapes. A high physical premium has attracted imports from abroad, and a weakening forward curve has encouraged traders to withdraw metal from storage in U.S. warehouses for quick sale, flooding the market with aluminum. However, U.S. traders and industry sources said very little of that aluminum is low-profile sow or t-bar, the shapes that U.S. rolling mills are best equipped to use in fabricating sheet for the beverage can and automotive industries. T-bars are long, smooth slabs of metal with a short base that enables forklift operators to transport them,...
While noting that it was not possible to forecast the extent of electricity curtailment over the remainder of the year, aluminium manufacturer Hulamin says it is “already clear” that its earnings per share (EPS) and headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the six months to June 30 will be more than 20% lower than those of the first six months of the prior year. The company outlined in a trading update on Thursday that first-quarter manufacturing output had been severely impacted by electricity supply curtailments by energy utility Eskom, as well as quality issues on two product lines. Hulamin operated a complex serial manufacturing process that ran on a continuous basis and, as a result, lost production could not be recovered. “Product temperatures must be carefully maintained within...
Seychelles Breweries Ltd (SBL), the Indian Ocean island archipelago's only brewery, is for the first time making available canned versions of Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta, three of its lines of soft drinks bottled and sold locally. All three soft drink brands are produced under license from the Coca-Cola Company, an American multinational beverage manufacturer, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with authorized bottlers worldwide. Seychelles Breweries, being the only authorized bottler of the Coca-Cola Company in the Indian Ocean archipelago, was already producing Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta locally in 500 ml and 1.5 litre plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. In a press statement sent to SNA, the company's Managing Director Patricia Berthelot, said the new 330 ml...
Car frames, soda cans and bicycles are becoming less expensive to produce as manufacturers pay the smallest premiums in almost three years to secure aluminum. The surcharge added to the cost of metal for immediate delivery on the London Metal Exchange will probably fall as much as 46 percent in the U.S. and Europe by the end of 2015, according to Harbor Aluminum Intelligence. Premiums in Europe have slumped to the lowest in 34 months, down from a record in November, data from the Austin, Texas-based researcher show. Aluminum consumers including beermaker MillerCoors LLC and fabricator Novelis Inc. had complained that some warehouse companies were creating backlogs and inflating their costs. Premiums are now falling as wait times shrink and storage companies no longer compete with...
Constellium N.V. announced today that it has decided to build a second Body-in-White (BiW) finishing line in North America to further support the growing demand for aluminium from the U.S. automotive industry. The investment is expected to reach $160 million and is part of the previously announced $750 million strategic investment plan to increase Constellium’s BiW production capacity by 2022. The location of the 100,000 metric tons BiW finishing line which is due to start production in early 2018 has not yet been decided and will be announced in due course, pending final business considerations. “In light of current volume commitments from customers, we have decided to add further capacity and launch the construction of a second BiW finishing line. This move reflects the success of our...
Vishay Intertechnology, Inc.today introduced a new series of miniaturized snap-in power aluminum capacitors with high capacitance from 820 µF to 47,000 µF in compact cases down to 20 mm by 25 mm. Designed for audio, industrial, and general power supply applications, 256 PMG-SI capacitors offer a long useful life, high ripple current, and low ESR. Featuring a cylindrical aluminum case with a pressure relief valve, insulated with a blue PET sleeve, the new Vishay BCcomponents snap-in capacitors released today are available in 17 case sizes ranging from 20 mm by 25 mm to 35 mm by 45 mm, with voltages from 16 V to 100 V. The devices offer a wide temperature range from -40 °C to +105 °C, useful life of 2,000 hours at +105 °C, ripple current to 4.85 A, and ESR down to 14 mO. As polarized...
China Zhongwang Holdings Limited, the second largest industrial aluminium extrusion product developer and manufacturer in the world and the biggest one inAsia, announced its unaudited consolidated results for the three months ended31 March 2015 (the "review period"). While quarterly revenue remained flat at approximatelyRMB3.59 billion, the Group benefited from the increasing share of high-end aluminium extrusion products in its product mix and achieved 2.5 percentage points year-on-year increase in gross margin to 29.3%. Net profit increased by 15.9% toRMB580 million. Mr. Lu Changqing, Executive Director and Vice President of China Zhongwang, said, "In the first quarter of 2015, we continued to step up our R&D in high-end aluminium extrusion and deep-processed products in a drive to...
Leading aluminum can sheet producer Novelis Inc lost business to competitors after a three-week outage at its U.S. joint venture rolling mill in January, a company executive told reporters on Wednesday. Vice President and General Manager Tom Boney said at a roundtable discussion that the outage at the Logan Aluminum mill in Russellville, Kentucky "created quite a gap in supply. "Other industry participants were able to secure some of that business as well," Boney said, adding that there was no disruption to overall can production. "The industry was able to absorb that." Novelis and Tri-Arrows Aluminum own the mill. The Logan plant supplies more than one-third of the U.S. beverage can market, according to Novelis' website. The company incrementally ramped up beverage can sheet capacity at...
Ball Corporation has announced plans to build a two-line beverage can manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, with construction starting in the coming months. Production is expected to start in the first half of 2016 and produce multiple can sizes. The majority of the capacity is contracted under a long-term agreement. Existing extruded aluminium aerosol manufacturing plant Daniel Fisher, president, metal beverage packaging, Ball North America, told FoodProductionDaily This is Ball’s first beverage packaging plant in Mexico. It will house two production lines and will be built in the Finsa Guadalupe Industrial Park in Nuevo Leon,” he said. “We also have an existing extruded aluminium aerosol manufacturing plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. “The plant will produce standard and specialty...
Despite the numerous trouble spots around the world and restrained economic growth in many areas, the production figures released by the international producers of aluminium aerosol cans have only been heading in one direction for years: upwards. The industry also reported positive results for 2014. After a series of records in recent years production grew again last year: by four per cent to 7.6 billion cans. The companies that are members of AEROBAL, the International Organisation of Aluminium Aerosol Container Manufacturers, account for about 70 per cent of total production worldwide. Gregor Spengler, Secretary General of Düsseldorf-based AEROBAL, is pleased with the results: "Disproportionately high growth compared with almost all important global economic indicators demonstrates the...
