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Aluminium/Bauxite

Canada Signals ‘Trade War’ in Seeking Steel, Aluminum Exemptions – by Danielle Bochove, Josh Wingrove and Kristine Owram (Bloomberg News – March 1, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Canada is vowing to retaliate if U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on his pledge to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum producers — while holding out hope that it could be exempt.

Trump said he intends to slap a 25 percent duty on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum in order to protect the national industry, though details remain unclear. His words sent U.S.-based producers rallying but could hurt companies that ship steel and aluminum from Canada, including Rio Tinto Group and Stelco Holdings Inc., without an exemption.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said that Canada buys more than half of American steel, resulting in a $2 billion surplus for the U.S. She also said it’s “entirely inappropriate” for the U.S. to consider the country a threat to national security.

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U.S. Slaps Duties on China Aluminum Foil as Xi Ally Arrives (Bloomberg News – February 27, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The U.S. Commerce Department slapped stiff duties on aluminum foil from China after concluding that the country’s producers are receiving unfair subsidies and dumping the product in the American market.

Duties from 49 percent to 106 percent will be imposed on Chinese aluminum foil for selling the product in the U.S. below fair market value, the department said in a statement Tuesday. The Trump administration also set duties of 17 percent to 81 percent for the unfair subsidies that the U.S. has concluded Chinese producers receive.

The issue now goes before the U.S. International Trade Commission, which is expected to have the final say on the injury claims in a vote scheduled for March 15, the Aluminum Association, which is based in Virginia, said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

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Rusal quest for value to dent Glencore’s aluminum clout – by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Polina Devitt (Reuters U.S. – February 27, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Mining giant Glencore’s deal to buy aluminum from Rusal will be renewed from 2019, but the tonnage is likely to be much lower as the Russian producer taps into growing demand for value-added products, two sources close to the matter said.

Unless it sources from additional suppliers, the reduction in volume will weaken the leading position held for years by Swiss-based Glencore in the global aluminum market.

Rusal, controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska and co-owned by Glencore, is expected to cut the volume in any new deal by 25-50 percent from the 14.5 million tonnes that covers the seven years from 2012 to 2018.

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Why Indian Aluminium Firms Are Banking on Clusters – by Special India Correspondent (Aluminium Insider – February 21, 2018)

https://aluminiuminsider.com/

Leading Indian aluminium companies are turning to the cluster model to tap downstream investments and diversify aluminium applications in the country.

Both state run entities National Aluminium Company (Nalco) and Vedanta Ltd, the Indian arm of London listed metals conglomerate Vedanta Resources Plc, are developing aluminium parks to offer a conducive ecosystem to players in the downstream space.

To lure the downstream industries, both primary aluminium producers are offering a suite of incentives ranging from discounted molten aluminium supplies to concessional land plots at the parks. India’s aluminium growth story is robust. Between 2015 and 2016, the country’s total aluminium consumption expanded by 18.75 per cent, riding on increased offtake in the electrical, transportation and construction sectors.

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Rusal’s Deripaska to Step Down and Focus on Norilsk Nickel – by Staff (Aluminium Insider – February 20, 2018)

https://aluminiuminsider.com/

Russian Federation industrialist Oleg Deripaska is to step down from his position as president of both En+ Group and U.C. Rusal, Russian and international media reported.

While RUSAL clarified that no such decision has been made yet and that the Company’s board will discuss executive changes on 22 February, sources told the media earlier this week that Deripaska will announce his departure from these two pursuits, retaining only his official capacity at GAZ Group, which is Russia’s premier producer of commercial vehicles. According to insiders, the move was in the works prior to news of the renewed fight for Norilsk Nickel.

The battle to control Norilsk has been an off-again, on-again affair for the last decade that began upon the exit of Mikhail Prokhorov from the firm. Prokhorov, who was Vladimir Potanin’s partner in the venture the time of his departure, left a partial ownership void when he stepped down in 2008. Although Potanin had his sights set on acquiring the then-unclaimed share of the enterprise, Deripaska’s Rusal purchased the interest instead.

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U.S. Commerce Wants Aluminum Tariff-Quota on Imports – by Joe Deaux and Andrew Mayeda (Bloomberg News – February 16, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Shares in U.S. aluminum and steel companies from Alcoa Corp. to Nucor Corp. surged after the U.S. Commerce Department recommended that President Donald Trump impose a range of restrictions on imports from tariffs to quotas.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday over the results of his department’s investigation, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross proposed a 24 percent global tariff on steel shipments coming into the U.S. and a 7.7 percent duty on aluminum imports. Trump has the latitude to choose between these types of options or even enter talks with producers to find solutions.

The recommendations pushed up Century Aluminum Co. as much as 11 percent, while Alcoa gained 5.5 percent. Aluminum on the London Metal Exchange rose as much as 2.4 percent as of 5:15 p.m. in London.

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Rio Tinto Confident U.S. Will Treat Canada Differently on Trade – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – February 7, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The head of Rio Tinto Group’s aluminum division is confident the Trump administration will recognize that Canada must be viewed differently when considering import tariffs on the metal and in Nafta talks.

“There’s a clear recognition of the strategic importance of the Canadian industry to the American manufacturing base,” Alf Barrios, chief executive of Rio Tinto’s aluminum division, said Wednesday in a phone interview. That view was expressed to him in conversations within the last few weeks, he said. “It is different than the other importing countries.”

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump received the findings of the eight-month “Section 232” investigation into whether aluminum imports pose a threat to national security.

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COLUMN-Five stand-outs in China’s base metals trade last year – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – January 29, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – China’s base metals imports stopped offering a simple, over-arching story line several years ago. The country has built out ever more processing capacity over the last decade, meaning that the “real” story is often what’s happening at the raw materials stage of the supply chain.

In cases such as aluminium, China has arguably constructed too much smelter capacity, to the point that the rest of the world has stopped caring about how much it imports but rather how much it exports.

Across the rest of the metallic complex, individual market dynamics have become ever more important, fracturing the Chinese trade picture into multiple, sometimes contradictory parts. Against an increasingly kaleidoscopic backdrop, here are five key take-aways from last year’s trade flows.

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COLUMN-What does looming US-China trade showdown mean for aluminium? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – January 25, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) – China is awash with aluminium. “Illegal” capacity has been closed and smelters in the region around Beijing are, to varying extents, curtailing output to comply with the winter environmental restrictions.

But stocks registered with the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) continue to build. They surged by 653,411 tonnes last year and were up another 30,000 tonnes at a fresh record high of 783,759 tonnes as of last Friday.

U.S. producer Alcoa told analysts on its Q1 conference call it is forecasting a 1.5-1.7 million tonne surplus in China this year, notwithstanding Beijing’s efforts to restrain capacity. It is also forecasting a bigger deficit of 2.0-2.2 million tonnes in the rest of the world, where visible stocks have been falling for many months.

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Commerce secretary gives Trump options to fight steel and aluminum dumping, including higher tariffs – by Lori Ann LaRocco (CNBC – January 22, 2018)

https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has recommended to President Donald Trump a wide range of options to deal with aluminum and steel dumping in the U.S., including potentially higher tariffs, sources told CNBC.

The options also include specifically targeting “bad actors” in other countries that are active in imports of the metals. Trump and his administration announced the Section 232 investigation into steel and aluminum in April 2017. The investigation was to determine whether the imports posed a threat to the country’s national security.

Trump has 90 days to review the so-called 232 report’s findings and recommendations. The president would then decide on what course of action to take.

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Rio Tinto builds bauxite expansion option at Amrun – by Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – January 23, 2018)

http://www.afr.com/

Rio Tinto’s $US1.9 billion ($2.4 billion) Amrun bauxite project is being built with foundations to support a much bigger expansion in the future, with the project now more than 75 per cent complete.

Approved by the Rio board in November 2015, the Amrun team will soon award some of the major contracts associated with the project, including for shiploaders, reclaimers and stackers. Amrun will produce 22.8 million tonnes of bauxite per year starting in mid 2019, with 10 million tonnes of that set to replace a nearby mine that is close to retirement.

Rio’s growth and innovation executive Stephen McIntosh said the size of the resource at Amrun could support a more than doubling of production in the future if Rio ever chose to pursue further expansion.

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China ramps up aluminum output in Dec amid new capacity launches – by Tom Daly (Reuters U.S. – January 18, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s aluminum production rebounded in December to its highest since June, reversing five months of declines, as state-owned Chinalco launched new capacity even as Beijing curbed its private rivals, lifting 2017 output to a record.

The world’s top aluminum producer churned out 2.71 million tonnes of the metal last month, up 15.3 percent from 2.35 million tonnes in November, although it was down 1.8 percent from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported on Thursday.

For the full year, China produced 32.27 million tonnes of aluminum, a rise of 1.6 percent from 2016, the data showed.

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Liberty House makes binding offer for Rio Tinto’s French aluminum smelter – by Maytaal Angel (Reuters U.S. – January 10, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Liberty House, the industrial arm of British steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, said on Wednesday it had made a binding offer for miner Rio Tinto’s (RIO.AX) (RIO.L) aluminum smelter in Dunkirk, France, the largest in Europe.

The group said it had chosen to invest in France in part because of a pro-business environment created by French President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

Rio Tinto said in a statement that the offer was worth $500 million ”subject to final adjustments’ and that it expects to complete the sale by the second quarter.

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RPT-COLUMN-Blue skies, green cars and a year of revolution for industrial metals – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – December 21, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Dec 22 (Reuters) – A little bit of metals history was recorded on March 29 this year. The small Central American country of El Salvador became the first nation to ban all exploration, mining and processing of metals.

Don’t worry if you didn’t notice. El Salvador doesn’t have any operating mines. It was going to have a gold mine, but in a public debate pitting economic growth against clean water supply, water won. Such environmental push-back against mining has become an ever more common feature of the metals industry.

But this year has marked a tipping point with China, a dominant producer of so many industrial metals, launching its own clamp-down on pollution. Multiple supply chains from aluminium to zinc have been disrupted with largely bullish, albeit at times chaotic, price impact.

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Aluminum under pressure after China smog cutbacks fall short – by Eric Onstad (Reuters U.S. – December 20, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – The price of aluminum has struggled in recent months as authorities in top producer China have failed to fully implement temporary winter smelter closures to slash pollution.

Lukewarm demand and new smelter projects in China are also poised to lead to more metal piling up, with inventories in the country already at record highs. China has seen sizzling growth in aluminum production over the past decade and now accounts for around half of global output.

Benchmark aluminum on the London Metal Exchange has gained 23 percent this year, but has failed to make further headway after touching a peak of $2,215 a ton in October, the highest level in more than five years. On Tuesday, aluminum – used in transportation, construction and packaging – was trading at around $2,090.

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