With Kizad zone, Abu Dhabi may put one past Dubai

Emirates Aluminium, or Emal, one of the largest aluminium companies, has set up a plant in this industrial zone.

“It currently produces 750,000 tonne of aluminium and is slated to add another 750,000 tonne to its annual capacity within a short time,” says HE Saeed Fadhel Al Mazrooei, president and chief executive officer, Emal.

Since aluminium is an energy intensive industry, the low energy costs in Abu Dhabi (estimated at under 5 cents per kWh compared to over 20 cents in India), will make aluminium production much more cost effective, he adds.

Also, it wants to offer at least 30% of its production in liquid metal to downstream units, thus saving them additional costs involved in first purchasing billets, re-melting them and then making aluminium products. The rest of the production will be in the form of billets, slabs and rods — both as pure aluminium and as alloys.

This could accelerate the export of bauxite to Kizad, as making aluminium there will be that much cheaper. It could also mean that some large producers of downstream aluminium products in India may opt to shift base to Kizad, he says.

Kizad has begun promoting metals (especially aluminium, steel and engineered metal products) among other products.Also, a liberal labour policy, which allows companies to import any type of labour from the global markets (without having to pay deposit guarantees for such workforce as long as it stays within the industrial zone), could make the job of relocating industries to Kizad much easier, he said.