The U.S. aluminium foil exports register YOY decline while India steps up production

The U.S. is one of the biggest markets of global aluminium foils. According to the Aluminum Association, the aluminium foil market in the North American country is currently valued at $5 billion, and about 36% of the total demand is met through imports, up from only 16% in 2007. As an interesting observation, net U.S. exports of aluminium sheets, plates, and foil displayed a generally upward trend from 2007 to 2013. However, over the last two years, this growth has slowed down significantly. In fact, exports of rolled aluminium products including aluminium foil have fallen by almost three times larger in value, resulting in a huge trade surplus of $511 million in 2015.

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Aluminium rolled products and foil imports from China to the U.S. have risen almost 10-fold, to 265 million pounds in the last ten years. The U.S. exported a total volume of 127.1 thousand tonnes aluminium foils in 2014, which shrunk 13.9% year-over-year to total at 109.4 thousand tonnes in 2014. In 2016, total aluminium foil export from the U.S. is estimated to reach 114.1 thousand tonnes, still 10.2% lower than 2014.


Value-wise, total aluminium foil exports from the U.S. totalled US$0.58 billion in 2014. In 2015, the realization declined as the total aluminium foil exports were valued at US$0.57 billion. In 2016, the total export value of the rolled aluminium product is estimated to decline further and reach US$0.54 billion, down 5.2% YOY from 2015 and 6.8% YOY from 2014.


As in primary metal, China now dominates the aluminium foil production space. However, in terms of consumption, the western world still continues to be the locomotive of demand growth rate. During the period 2010 to 15, along with China, the Middle East too has emerged as a significant producer and supplier of aluminium foil and foil stock to the world market.

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India along with other South-east Asian countries, on the other side, have projected great growth prospects in the aluminium foils market, though their share in the availability and consumption of aluminium foils is still way behind the per capita consumption rates of the developed world.

Nevertheless, India has developed a formidable downstream manufacturing sector over the years, wherein many aluminium foil manufacturers have made headways and flourished. Currently, these companies are in the process of expanding their global presence. India managed to export a total volume of 14.6 thousand tonnes of aluminium foils, worth US$70.6 million, in the year 2014. The volume plateaued in 2015, when the total export volume of aluminium foils from India reached 14.5 thousand tonnes, valued at US$82.8 million. In 2016, the total aluminium foil export from India is estimated to reach 16.2 thousand tonnes, valued at US$71.7 million.


The dynamics of global aluminium foil industry has been experiencing a paradigm shift over the years as the primary industry continues its drift east-ward. The major contributing factors in this change of trend have been widespread acceptance of continuous caster material as feed stock and increasing availability of cheaper and smaller-capacity, core-capital foil manufacturing equipment from countries like China, Taiwan and India.