Hulamin chairman expects growth in FY 2017, driven by stronger aluminium prices and healthy demand

<p>Chairman of Aluminium producer Hulamin Mafika Mkwanazi has positive prospects for the company&rsquo;s 2017 financial year.&nbsp;</p> <p><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="http://www.alcircle.com/uploads/images/hulamin.jpg" alt="News" width="517" height="226" /></p> <p>He expects a stronger product mix, increased utilisation of scrap metal and efficiency improvements, supported by a solid manufacturing performance to benefit profits for H1 2017. According to him, benefits of a stronger global aluminium price would offset the negative effect on Hulamin&rsquo;s conversion margins. &nbsp;Stronger rand-dollar exchange rate average recorded in the first few months of 2017 also supported that.</p> <p>Hulamin is seeing growth momentum across all its operations, particularly its rolled products division due to buoyant customer demand. Local packaging and engineering markets had improved since late 2016 driving demand for rolled products.</p> <p>"Local sales of can stock, which are usually seasonally lower in the first quarter, increased measurably in March of the current year after an expected slow start. Our expectation remains for reasonably strong growth in local sales in 2017, underpinned by increasing can stock demand."</p> <p>{googleAdsense}</p> <p>Mkwanazi highlighted the antidumping and countervailing duty petitions filed by the US in March against the import of aluminium foil from China which is expected to strengthen realised foil prices in the US. He also pointed towards the increasing LME aluminium prices after a squeeze on global aluminium supply.</p> <p>Mkwanazi said that the declining supply in China because of low profits and environmental issues&nbsp; &nbsp;would have an effect on global aluminium supply as it was dominated by Chinese capacity.</p> <p>Hulamin, according to him benefited from a rising aluminium price via the unhedged portion of its aluminium inventory pool.</p>