Twitter

Aluminium/Bauxite

Rusal appoints CEO, third-quarter profit up as sanctions postponed (Reuters U.S. – November 5, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian aluminum giant Rusal (0486.HK) has appointed a chief executive, it said on Monday, after reporting a 42 percent jump in third-quarter recurring net profit on the previous quarter as sanctions imposed by Washington were postponed.

The U.S. Treasury Department in April blacklisted billionaire Oleg Deripaska and eight companies in which he is a large shareholder, including aluminum exporter Rusal, citing “malign activities” by Russia.

The sanctions, the toughest since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, have been postponed several times as the United States considers excluding Rusal from the U.S. blacklist if Deripaska drops his control over the company. The deadline was last extended to Dec. 12.

Read more

Trump Reviewing Tariffs on Canada Steel and Aluminum, Craft Says – by Josh Wingrove and Bryce Baschuk (Bloomberg/Yahoo Finance – October 26, 2018)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — The U.S., Canada and Mexico remain at odds over metals tariffs, with Donald Trump’s envoy to Canada saying the president is reviewing them.

Trump’s ambassador, Kelly Craft, argued Friday the levies on steel and aluminum imports were designed to prevent overseas metal from entering America via its neighbors.

“That is not something that is against Canada,” Craft said at an event near Niagara Falls with Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., David MacNaughton. “It’s just protecting North America from other countries that will be passing raw materials through, and also to protect our steel industry at home.”

Read more

‘Winter is coming’: Labour dispute at aluminum smelter drags into 10th month as industry outlook darkens – by Gabriel Freidman (Financial Post – October 25, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

For the 1,000 workers locked out almost a year ago, tariffs and trade wars are making the future even more uncertain

Snowflakes fell early Wednesday morning along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in Bécancour, Quebec, where Jennie Vallé-Boucher is one of about 1,000 workers from an aluminum smelter, who is preparing to spend a second winter on the picket line.

In January, Alcoa Corp., which owns 70 per cent and operates the Bécancour smelter, locked out its unionized workers in a labour dispute that continues to boil over even as a cloud of uncertainty has settled over Canada’s aluminum industry.

One thing is clear, however: If and when the lock out ends, market conditions are unlikely to be the same as when it started. In the nearly 10 months that have passed since the dispute erupted, the U.S. enacted 10 per cent tariffs on aluminum imports, which remain in place despite negotiating a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

Read more

Tariffs eroding profits and driving up costs, metal manufacturers tell lawmakers – by Eric Atkins (Globe and Mail – October 23, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Metal manufacturers and fabricators aired their complaints about trade barriers in Ottawa on Tuesday, telling members of Parliament that U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum coupled with Canada’s countermeasures are eroding profits and driving up costs. This is giving foreign rivals an edge, the business people said, appearing before the standing committee on international trade.

Chris Wharin of Bohne Spring Industries Ltd., a Toronto-based maker of springs, wire and metal work for automotive and other uses, said that to keep its customers, the company cannot pass on some of the higher import and manufacturing costs incurred since Canada placed retaliatory tariffs of 10 per cent and 25 per cent on metal products from the United States.

“This is having a crippling effect on our cash flow and profits,” he said, adding the company relies on U.S. suppliers for much its steel and is unable to find domestic replacements.

Read more

Canada, U.S. in talks to end steel, aluminum tariffs – by Adrian Morrow and Eric Atkins (Globe and Mail – October 19, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canada and the United States are trying to negotiate an end to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, with the goal of reaching a deal before the formal signing of the proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement at the end of November.

Talks have focused on Canada agreeing to a quota on exports of those metals to the United States in exchange for the Trump administration lifting the tariffs, people in both countries with knowledge of the talks said. The Globe and Mail granted anonymity to five sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer discussed the matter last week at Ms. Freeland’s Toronto home, a Canadian government source said, and agreed they had to reach a resolution.

Read more

Commentary: Alumina wake-up call for the aluminium supply chain – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – October 15, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – The alumina market is experiencing a year of unprecedented turbulence. Alumina, which sits in the aluminium production process between bauxite and refined metal, has historically been a highly efficient link in the supply chain.

It hasn’t generated many headlines over the years because it has largely avoided any newsworthy disruption. It is, to quote Greg Wittbecker, analyst at the CRU research house, one of those markets “people have taken for granted”.

Not any more. A series of supply hits have sent the alumina price on a rollercoaster ride this year, at one stage threatening the closure of several European aluminium smelters. This volatility poses some hard questions for aluminium producers, not least as to how alumina is priced.

Read more

The Metal That Started Trump’s Trade War – by Matthew Philips and Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – October 1, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The president’s aluminum tariff is bad for America—and great for Switzerland’s Glencore.

Working at the Century Aluminum Co. smelter in Hawesville, Ky., can be like having a job in an oven. The interior temperature hovers around 140F, which isn’t necessarily hotter than, say, your typical steel mill. What’s especially hellish about an aluminum smelter is how close you have to stand to bubbling vats of molten, electrified metal.

Workers wear helmets, masks, and heavy, fire-retardant clothing. They look like smoke jumpers. Over a 12-hour shift they’ll lose several pounds of water weight as they peer over cauldrons, occasionally stirring 1,700-degree liquid aluminum with long metal rods.

They wear earplugs against the hum of 170,000 amps surging through the mixture, which chemically breaks down ore. The air itself feels charged—and smells like the blended aromas of an overheated car engine and a sweaty fistful of coins. If you breathe through your mouth, you can taste the metal on your tongue.

Read more

LMEWEEK-Macro disquiet drowns out signs of base metals shortages – by Eric Onstad (Reuters U.K. – October 4, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) – Uncertainty about how metals demand will be hit by trade wars, rising U.S. interest rates and a slowdown in China is weighing on industrial metals prices, submerging signals pointing to potential shortages.

The index of copper and five other top industrial metals traded on the London Metal Exchange has shed 11 percent this year while prices for the worst-performing metals, zinc and lead, have tumbled by about a fifth.

But as speculators pile on bearish positions and investors flee from the metals market during tit-for-tat trade volleys, signs of metals shortfalls are building.

Read more

Guinea’s bauxite boom upending rural communities – HRW – by Joe Bavier (Reuters Africa – October 4, 2018)

https://af.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 4 (Reuters) – As mining companies in Guinea ramp up bauxite production, they are upending rural communities and undermining air and water quality while government authorities fail to rein in abuses, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Thursday.

In the past three years, the West African nation, Africa’s biggest producer of the aluminium ore, has seen bauxite output explode, mainly on the back of demand from China.

Despite the growth in economic activity however, Guinea’s bauxite mining heartland has been racked by unrest in recent years, fuelled by the frustrations of the local population.

Read more

Ford CEO says Trump’s metal tariffs cost auto maker $1-billion – by Nick Carey and David Shepardson (Globe and Mail/Reuters – September 27, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have cost Ford Motor Co about $1-billion in profits, its chief executive officer said on Wednesday, while Honda Motor Co said higher steel prices have brought “hundreds of millions of dollars” in new costs.

“From Ford’s perspective the metals tariffs took about $1-billion in profit from us,” CEO James Hackett said at a Bloomberg conference in New York, “The irony of which is we source most of that in the U.S. today anyway. If it goes on any longer, it will do more damage.”

Hackett did not specify what period the $1-billion covered, but a spokesman said the automaker’s CEO was referring to internal forecasts at Ford for higher tariff-related costs in 2018 and 2019.

Read more

NEWS RELEASE: NAFTA Deal a Sell-Out for Canadian Steel, Aluminum Workers

TORONTO, Oct. 1, 2018 /CNW/ – Tens of thousands of Canadian families have been left in the lurch from concessions made by the Liberal government to get a deal with the Unites States on a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement.

“Time and time again during the NAFTA renegotiations, the Liberal government assured Canadians that it was defending our steel and aluminum sectors and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Canadian families,” said Ken Neumann, United Steelworkers (USW) Canadian Director.

“Given the Liberal government’s rhetoric throughout the process, it was inconceivable that it would agree to any deal that harms Canada’s steel and aluminum sectors,” Neumann said.

Read more

U.S. `Takes Grenade Off the Table’ With Tweak to Rusal Sanctions – by Jack Farchy and Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – September 18, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The U.S. has laid the groundwork to avoid a brewing crisis in the global aluminum market. By making a technical tweak to sanctions on United Co. Rusal on Friday, the U.S. Treasury handed a potential lifeline to buyers of aluminum whose annual contracts with the Russian company are soon due to expire.

That makes it less likely there will be a repeat of the chaos that gripped the aluminum market in April when the curbs were first imposed.

Crucially, the U.S. said that Rusal’s existing customers could negotiate some new contracts, but stopped short of lifting the aggressive sanctions off Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire who has been accused by the U.S. of links to organized crime and bribery.

Read more

Canada’s Aluminum Valley grapples with U.S. tariffs – by Emma Jacobs (Market Place.org – September 17, 2018)

https://www.marketplace.org/

Canada’s Aluminum Valley is a two-hour drive north of Quebec City, in the region of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. Five aluminum smelters along a 50-mile stretch of the Saguenay River account for almost half of Canada’s aluminum production.

This has residents here following negotiations between Canada and the United States over a new North American Free Trade Agreement especially closely, with hopes an accord will clear the way to lifting tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in place since June.

The first smelter opened in this region in 1926 was built by Americans, attracted by plentiful hydroelectricity. The adjoining company town was named Arvida, after industrialist Arthur Vining Davis. The structures from the Arvida smelter are still part of the large Jonquière Complex, which includes two of the smelters and a refinery.

Read more

Commentary: Relief for Rusal, but aluminium’s political risks remain – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – September 17, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON The United States has thrown Russian aluminium company Rusal a lifeline by loosening sanctions imposed on the company in April. Critically, the U.S. Treasury has tweaked its sanctions to allow Rusal to enter into new contracts with existing customers.

This is good news for the Russian company, which has been shunned by buyers negotiating 2019 shipments. It’s also good news for the aluminium market, which was facing the prospect of 3.7 million tonnes of Rusal product being locked out of the supply chain.

However, the broader sanctions threat against Rusal, a by-product of the sanctions against its oligarch owner Oleg Deripaska, remains. An Oct. 23 deadline for customers to wind down business with the company still stands, leaving any new contracts still beholden to the same underlying uncertainty about when sanctions will be fully lifted.

Read more

Simmering Alcoa Labor Dispute Morphs Into ‘Clash of the Titans’ – by Sandrine Rastello and Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – September 11, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Workers of the Alcoa Corp.-controlled Becancour smelter in Quebec stand guard under umbrellas outside the gates. Whenever a vehicle approaches, a pair scurries to take down the driver’s details and make sure there’s no scab laborer in disguise.

The ritual, witnessed on a rainy August morning, has become part of life at the aluminum plant since January, when the company locked out more than 1,000 employees represented by the United Steelworkers union. The entrance is also where tensions have flared as the conflict, which started over pensions and recruitment rules, turned into a deadlock.

For Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, the dispute has resulted in a production decline at the plant, adding to pressures resulting from U.S. aluminum tariffs that have hit its three smelters in Canada. The company is now seeking deeper changes — including reduced payrolls — to make the plant more competitive. For their part, workers say they’ve already made concessions and are fighting to retain seniority rights.

Read more