AL Circle Analysis: 243% US scrap rise, 6Mt European recycling & Germany’s power fix drive aluminium trade
Aluminium’s trade map is no longer drawn by smelters alone. Scrap flows, power contracts, industrial policy and specialist grades now shape who secures metal, at what cost and under whose rules. Ten recent developments across Europe, the US, Australia, Japan and Mexico show how recycling, energy and regulation are becoming the new levers of aluminium competitiveness. They also show where traders, exporters and policymakers may need to adjust. Scrap tug-of-war: the US pull, Europe’s leak and the recycling base at stake The pull starts with price. The US UBC scrap benchmark averaged USD 2,322.89 a tonne in July, USD 2,491.22 in August and USD 2,602.51 in September. That is a 12 per cent climb, and it came after a July that opened at USD 2,464.98 and fell to USD 2,270.76 within two days....
Europe’s 9M 2026 aluminium production jumps to 5.56Mt as smelter restarts gain ground
As the global aluminium supply chain continues to swing between shifts and crunches, how has Europe fared on the production front in the 2026 year-to-date calendar? Substantially well, going by the output figures. Between January and September 2026, the European continent, including Russia, has produced a total of 5.56 million tonnes of primary aluminium, building a significant year-on-year growth chart. The nine-month growth chart Set against the same period of 2025, the first nine months of 2026 show a clear lift in output. From January to September 2026, Europe, including Russia, produced 5.56 million tonnes of primary aluminium, raising the annual growth rate by 5.69 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) over the 5.26 million tonnes produced in 2025. Explore the production, demand and...
Grow with
AL Circle
Constellium warns EU: Eradicate CBAM or the aluminium industry fades away, European companies agree
Constellium vocalises the warning that the European Union (EU) should immediately eradicate the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Its claim that the EU is posing a risk with the implementation of CBAM in January 2026, which is likely to ensure the slow demise of the European aluminium industry, is resonated by other aluminium product makers. Image for representational purpose only Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports across the value chain Constellium criticises CBAM CBAM is intended to impose tax and levy on a selective set of imported goods including primary and secondary aluminium, to ensure they pay a similar carbon cost as those who produce it within the EU. Those who fail to produce documents of low-carbon emission will be subject to...
EV anticipation for ’26: Who’s accelerating and who’s hitting the brake?
The farewell of 2025 and the fast-approaching 2026 drive home with it the anticipation for a global revolution of electric vehicles (EVs). The most influential manufacturers gear up for the revving launch of the next-gen, advanced, hi-tech, battery-electric models, while circumstantial roadblocks lead to the withdrawal of several EV names from the ’26 launch plan. Image for representational purpose only Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports across the value chain Dropping out of the race Although these models showcased promising characteristics for a sunny joyride, the market circumstances or lack of federal and state incentives put a raincheck on the debut dates. Big brands like Nissan, Mercedes, Polestar, Porsche and Maserati hit the brakes and stay...
Here’s why Maxion is deepening its footprint in Argentina despite Brazil’s lead
Iochpe-Maxion, a global manufacturer of automotive wheels and structural components, through its subsidiary Maxion Wheels, announced that it was taking strategic measures to strengthen its light vehicle aluminium wheel business in South America. It had redeployed existing global production assets to Brazil and has acquired a 50.1 per cent stake in Polimetal, a major aluminium wheel manufacturer in Argentina, which has been successfully completed. Now, the question arises: when the firm was focusing on Brazil, why did it acquire an Argentina-based company? The acquisition of Polimetal by Iochpe-Maxion has been completed by Marval, who acted as the legal counsel for the Group, aiding in structuring and implementing the agreement of the acquisition at 50.1 per cent stake. Glance at...
Ivanpah set to shut - What’s America’s 25-year renewable energy plan?
The United States is pushing for cleaner, greener energy across all sectors — including aluminium — using federal funding, new technology and expanded recycling to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while still meeting rising demand. The industry’s main book for decarbonisation comes from the Aluminum Association’s North American aluminium decarbonisation roadmap, which pictures a world where emissions would drop by 92 per cent from 2021 levels to 2050, even as output grows 78 per cent. A cleaner grid is supposed to do 36 per cent of the work. Turning off natural-gas furnaces and shifting them to electrification, green hydrogen and carbon-capture tools handle another slice. Inert-anode smelting brings in 15 per cent, while cleaning up alumina refining adds 17 per cent more. The federal...
What will be the global bauxite outlook for 2026 after BMI cuts its 2025 forecast?
Aluminium isn’t just another industrial staple, but the Earth’s most abundant metallic element, quietly making up nearly 8 per cent of the planet’s crust. And almost all of it starts with bauxite: a humble, rust-tinged ore rich in the aluminium minerals gibbsite, boehmite and diaspore. Look closely at the map, and a pattern emerges — the world’s richest bauxite belts lie in today’s tropics or regions shaped by tropical geology, from Guinea and Australia to Vietnam, Brazil and Jamaica. The scale is staggering. The US Geological Survey estimates that, as of 2024, the world is sitting on nearly 29 billion tonnes of known bauxite reserves. Source: https://www.alcircle.com/specialreport/2439/global-aluminium-industry-outlook-2025 Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with...
CONF: China's aluminium producers scrambling to expand overseas capacity
In recent years, Chinese aluminium companies have shown growing interest in expanding their footprint overseas, with several companies already operating plants, or planning to invest, in resource-rich countries such as Indonesia, Guinea, and Kazakhstan, Mo noted. This "going global" strategy is primarily driven by aluminium companies' demand to get access to abundant raw materials such as bauxite. Additionally, some foreign governments have introduced policies requiring local processing of mineral resources rather than the direct export of raw ores, prompting Chinese firms to invest in overseas alumina refineries. Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports across the value chain Notably, Chinese firms have already established approximately 7.65 million tonnes...
GCC aluminium output down 2.9% in first ten months as the region shifts to new bauxite suppliers post-Guinea ban
Across the Gulf, the primary aluminium and alumina sector has been moving at a noticeably different pace this year. Aluminium output across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has been edging lower through 2025, a trend that becomes clear once the latest numbers are lined up against last year’s. In the first ten months, smelters produced 5,128 thousand tonnes, compared with 5,282 thousand tonnes in the same period of 2024 — roughly a 2.9 per cent drop. Many operators sensed the shift even before the figures confirmed it, as daily output that once hovered around 17.2–17.5 thousand tonnes last year has settled closer to 16.7–17.0 thousand tonnes in 2025. Quarterly numbers confirm it. Q1 settled at 1.52 million tonnes compared with 1.58 million tonnes last year same period, and the daily...
How far is Europe from securing its rare earth future?
China, which has been the long-standing dominator of rare earths and its supply chain, imposed strict restrictions on rare earth exports on October 8. Many dependents on China’s rare earth, including the US and the EU, faced impacts, but later on, managed to strike a year-long truce. Beside China, the EU also entered into rare earth supply agreements with Canada, Namibia, Chile and others. Meanwhile, the bloc is also targeting to become self-reliant with 10 per cent extraction, 40 per cent processing and 15 per cent recycling. We are here to analyse if self reliance with no trace of domestic rare earth mining would be feasible for Europe. EU’s imports of rare earth from China As per the report of Statista, the EU imports nearly half of its rare earth from China, followed by Russia, which...
Henan unveils action plan for red mud utilisation
Henan province, a major aluminium and alumina producing hub in Central China, is stepping up efforts in systematically tackling the difficulties in the comprehensive utilisation of solid waste from alumina production in order to foster sustainable development for its alumina industry, Mysteel has learned. On November 27, six provincial departments of Henan, including the Department of Industry and Information Technology, jointly rolled out an action plan for the comprehensive utilisation of red mud, a highly alkaline, iron oxide-rich solid waste generated during the refining of bauxite ore into alumina. As China's fourth-largest alumina production region, Henan is home to seven alumina producers, with their combined alumina capacity accounting for 12.9 per cent of the national total....
America’s FRP market Part 2: Production falls behind demand, leaving 4.7MT deficit amid tariff shifts and new capacity plans
Part 1 showed how North and South America have become major drivers of global FRP consumption growth. But behind that surge lies a challenge the region can’t ignore — the Americas simply don’t produce enough flat-rolled aluminium to match this accelerating demand. North America manufactures only around 2.3–2.35 million tonnes a year. Novelis supplies the biggest share — 1.2 million tonnes in 2023, 1.25 million tonnes in 2024 and around 1.3 million tonnes expected in 2025. Alcoa adds 450–500 thousand tonnes from its Tennessee and Iowa mills; Constellium brings about 350 thousand tonnes from Georgia and Kentucky; Norsk Hydro contributes roughly 200 thousand tonnes. South America adds another 450–500 thousand tonnes, almost entirely from Novelis’ rolling operations in Brazil. The region...
WEEKLY: China's thermal coal market softens on bloated inventories
As of November 28, Mysteel's assessment for the benchmark 5,500 kcal per kg thermal coal at China's northern ports reached RMB 821per tonne (USD 116.8per tonne), down RMB 9per tonne from a week ago. The 5,000 kcal per kg and 4,500 kcal per kg NAR grades reached RMB 721per tonne and RMB 625per tonne, down RMB 16per tonne and RMB 13per tonne, respectively. All prices are on a FOB basis with 13per cent VAT included. Last week, coal inventories continued to build at northern transfer ports, raising concerns that authorities will mandate traders to accelerate cargo offloading to release room for new arrivals. In fact, some ports have required traders to secure buyer contracts before approving new train transport schedules. As of Friday, the eight northern ports that Mysteel surveys had 25.29...
America’s FRP market Part 1: Consumption to grow 15.29% CAGR through 2030 amid production uncertainty
Flat-rolled aluminium products (FRP), excluding aluminium foil, are no longer just another industrial material — they’ve become part of the machinery that keeps modern life running. They are everywhere: in electric cars, in the hardware behind renewable-energy systems, packaging, etc. As industries chase lighter, recyclable and more energy-efficient solutions, FRP has slipped into a central role almost by default. What’s striking is how quickly demand has climbed. With sustainability rules tightening and manufacturing in emerging economies expanding at full tilt, consumption has been rising at a pace rarely seen in metals. Global FRP demand is on track to jump from 20.33 million tonnes in 2020 to 40.30 million tonnes by 2030, and further rise by 6.82 per cent CAGR through 2032, which...
One month to CBAM: what’s in, what’s out, who pays, and how the aluminium industry must prepare
When the European Union rolled out its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2023, a few energy-intensive industries felt the tremors more. Aluminium was one of them, while the rest were iron and steel, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, and electricity industries. For them, CBAM appeared not just as another climate regulation but as a structural shift in its basic operational values. Apparently, CBAM is a bespoke tariff policy designed to target imported goods with high carbon emissions. But its underlying goal is also to introduce a level playing field in the domestic market by imposing the same carbon costs on importers that indigenous manufacturers pay under the ETS (Emissions Trading System). Among all the sectors caught in the net, aluminium and iron/steel are poised for the most...
India & 2050 aluminium prospect: demand is certain, India’s advantage isn’t
By mid-century, aluminium is set to become one of the defining industrial commodities of the energy transition. Long-range modelling (like Marshall’s Equilibrium Model) points in the same direction, i.e., global aluminium demand could grow by around 80 per cent by 2050 compared with 2020. According to World Economic Forum reports, within that aggregate picture, one recent macro-model of primary aluminium fundamentals suggests that demand for primary metal alone could approach 110 million tonnes by 2050, even as a rising share of total use is met by recycled metal. Image for representational purpose only Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports across the value chain Those projections are not abstract for India. The country is already the world’s...
WEEKLY: China's alumina prices soften further, inventories hit new high
Mysteel assessed the national average spot price for metallurgical-grade alumina with purity above 98.6 per cent at RMB 2,851 per tonne (USD 403 per tonne) on November 27, marking a marginal 0.3 per cent drop from a week earlier. During the same week, alumina stocks reached another all-time high. According to Mysteel's latest survey, as of November 27, total alumina inventories across ten major Chinese ports, 44 alumina producers, 89 primary aluminium smelters, and rail yards or in transit had increased for the 26th consecutive week to 4.94 million tonnes, rising by 1.2 per cent on week and renewing the highest level since the survey began in January 2022. Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports across the value chain Contributing most to the continued...
As the US and EU ring-fencing aluminium scrap through targeted measures, will Asia withstand the supply pressure?
Aluminium scrap has quietly become one of the most protected raw materials in the world specially in United States and the European Union — not through restrictions, but through deliberate exemptions. Washington has carved scrap out of Section 232 tariffs even as it tightened duties on primary aluminium, lifting the tariff rate to 50 per cent by June 2025. The split treatment is intentional. The US has a domestic primary metal shortage of nearly four million tonnes a year, and secondary smelters can expand only if scrap continues to flow in duty-free. Europe has taken a parallel — but more climate-driven — route. Aluminium scrap is excluded from the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which places carbon prices on primary and semi-finished imports but assigns zero emissions to...
Strong metal packaging market in North America and Europe reflects through Ardagh’s Q3 earnings
Ardagh Group, a global supplier of packaging solution, has turned in a solid set of numbers for the third quarter of 2025 ended September 30, riding on resilient demand for packaging across Europe and the Americas. Here metal packaging was star of the show overlooking glass that let Ardagh saw an uptick in Q3 performance. Metal packaging emerged as the star performer in Q3 For the three months ended September 30, the Group’s revenue resulted in USD 2,504 million in three months, up by 4.86 per cent from USD 2,388 million a year ago. While glass packaging in North America slipped 2.4 per cent, metal packaging held its ground with an increase of 8.4 per cent from USD 741 million to USD 803 million. Even in Europe, the revenue from metal packaging saw a staggering rise of 9.3 per cent from...
Global rare earth reserve, production and consumption scenario: A real-time check
In the 19th century, steel became the backbone of global industrial strategy. In the 20th century, it was oil. And, in the 21st century, it is the rare earth elements. 17 metallic elements from the periodic table, chemically similar and physically unremarkable to the eye, have become the scaffolding of electric vehicles, wind turbines, fighter jets, smartphones, navigation systems, medical devices, modern weapons and everything else that powers clean energy, digital connectivity and national defence. They are the ingredients behind the magnets that spin a wind turbine’s rotor, the catalysts that refine fuels, the phosphors that light an aircraft cockpit, and the polishing compounds that perfect wafer-thin lenses. Explore- Most accurate data to drive business decisions with 50+ reports...
