DUBAL JV development in China completed

The project to develop a 560,000 tonnes per annum calciner in Shandong, China - in which Dubai Aluminium (" DUBAL ") owns a 20 per cent stake as part of a joint venture with Sinoway Carbon Energy Holdings, Hong Kong - has been completed on schedule. So says Masood T Al Ali ( DUBAL 's Vice President: Supply and a Board Member of Sinoway Carbon), who advises that the new calciner was built in two equal phases of 280,000 tonnes each: Phase I was completed in May 2013, with Phase II being commissioned.

Al Ali advises that DUBAL 's investment in the new venture - known as Sinoway Carbon Company Limited ("Sinoway") - is aligned with the company's strategy to expand its interests in the upstream (raw materials) sector as part of its overall commitment to long-term sustainability. " DUBAL 's Jebel Ali operation currently ranks as the world's largest single-site primary aluminium smelter using pre-bake anode technology," Al Ali explains. "The end-product of the calcination process, calcined petroleum coke ("CPC"), is a strategic raw material for the aluminium smelting industry: we use it in the manufacture of carbon anodes for the electrolytic process of extracting the metal from its ore. Accordingly, our shareholding in Sinoway also includes DUBAL 's entitlement to an annual off-take volume of CPC for our smelting operations."

The location of the project in China is not by chance. To the contrary, China has a surplus supply of green petroleum coke ("GPC"), a by-product of oil refining and the raw material consumed by a calciner. Indeed, China currently produces more than 40 per cent of annual global GPC/CPC production, with several GPC refineries being in close proximity to the Sinoway development site.

"Aluminium smelting process is extremely sensitive to CPC quality, especially in terms of anode life and sulphur emissions, good quality GPC is necessary to produce the quality of CPC required by DUBAL , and China's GPC is well within this range," said Al Ali.