Rusal resumes aluminum supplies to the US; hopes to win back lost customers by September 2019

After the lifting of US sanctions, Rusal has resumed supplies to the U.S. market and the company now aims to gain back all the lost customer during the sanction period in which, supply contracts for 2020 were sealed. Rusal could not sign new contracts for 2019 in September as the company was still negotiating with the U.S. Treasury Department for sanction removal.

“We fulfilled all our obligations even during the period of sanctions, we did not allow ourselves a single failure. Therefore, some of our former partners are already coming back, new partners are coming,” CEO Evgenii Nikitin said.

In an interview with Reuters the CEO said that the company hopes to win back the old customers by September 2019 when period for signing new contracts arrives. The U.S. treasury lifted the sanctions on Rusal in January but continued to keep its ex-boss Oleg Deripaska under sanctions. Novelis Corp, the world’s biggest producer of rolled aluminium products is one of the key customers that Rusal lost in 2018. The company is partially resuming deliveries to them but hopes to get back old customers not before September.

“We expect to restore lost positions in all the traditional markets for the company, including Asia and America, with which difficulties arose last year. To date, we have already resumed deliveries to the American market,” Nikitin said.

He said that the 2019 volumes for most of its U.S. and Japanese customers are already contracted and they will be in touch if they need to increase the volume. The CEO also said that Rusal is negotiating with Glencore for renewal of a contract which expired in late 2018.

Rusal plans to keep its 2019 production and investments unchanged at 3.8 million tonnes and $900 million, respectively, Nikitin added.