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Aluminium/Bauxite

Should Chevy Have Held Its Fire With Silverado “Bed Wars” Ad – by Mark Williams (Pickup Trucks.com – June 18, 2016)

http://news.pickuptrucks.com/

Why would anyone want to drop more than 800 pounds of expensive landscape blocks into a pickup bed from five feet in the air? Nobody in his or her right mind would allow a guy at the local building supply store to dump a load into a bed like that. We understand that’s not the point; like many nonsensical commercials nowadays — the point is that you could if you wanted to.

As it relates to the tiresome game of one-upmanship in pickup truck advertising, that kind of self-promotion (or attack promotion) seen in the latest Chevy Silverado commercial is likely to be around for a long time to come. And don’t get us wrong; we like healthy competition and testing and we want to see the results.

In fact, on a related note, it wasn’t that long ago that we had our first chance to drive the redesigned Honda Ridgeline.

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NEWS RELEASE: The National Research Council is spearheading research efforts with provinces and industry to develop innovative aluminium products

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/index.html

Tuesday, June 14, 2016 – Ottawa, Ontario ─ A newly formed alliance called ALTec Industrial research R&D Group is consolidating research efforts in the Canadian aluminium sector to develop innovative aluminium products for ground transportation vehicles. As a cost-effective and sustainable material, aluminum is increasingly being used to manufacture components for lightweight vehicles which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and meet increasingly stringent fuel consumption requirements.

“By 2020, the world aluminum market in the transportation sector alone is forecasted to represent more than 65 billion US dollars,” says Michel Dumoulin, General Manager of Automotive and Surface Transportation at the National Research Council of Canada. “Canadian businesses include aluminum in the design of their vehicles, but we saw a gap in knowledge transfer and this is where ALTec comes in.”

ALTec has already 23 members and partners which will have access to state-of-the-art facilities and Canada’s most advanced expertise in aluminium forming, assembling, corrosion control, and performance validation.

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New GM ads hit Ford hard over aluminum pickup trucks – by Brent Snavely (U.S.A. Today – June 8, 2016)

http://www.usatoday.com/

Detroit Free Press – Chevrolet launched a new, national ad campaign Wednesday for its Silverado pickups that revives the often testy battle with crosstown rival Ford over who makes the biggest, best or toughest truck.

The ad campaign touts the results of lab tests that it says show how the Silverado’s roll-formed, high-strength steel bed suffers far less damage than the Ford F-150’s aluminum truck bed when a load of concrete blocks are dumped into the back of the trucks.

The ads debuted today with four-page wrap-around print advertisements in several major newspapers, including USA TODAY. General Motors also posted a 3-minute video that shows the cinder block demonstration with the F-150 truck bed getting gashed by the concrete blocks and the Silverado truck bed only being dented.

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Saudi mining hub plays key role in kingdom’s industrial dream – by Katie Paul (Reuters U.S. – June 3, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

RAS AL-KHAIR, Saudi Arabia, June 2 At a sprawling desert complex on Saudi Arabia’s northeastern Gulf coast, refineries, smelters and casting machines transform dull pink rocks into silver aluminium bars, a symbol of the kingdom’s attempt to diversify its economy.

After only two years in operation, the $10.8 billion aluminium project at Ras al-Khair, an industrial city 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the oil hub of Dammam, is already the world’s largest integrated aluminium facility.

And in coming years, the success of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to build an economy that does not rely on oil and state subsidies will depend partly on what state-controlled Saudi Arabian Mining Co (Ma’aden), which runs the complex, can achieve with it.

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WAR OF IDEAS: GM’S MIXED-MATERIAL STRATEGY VS. FORD’S BET ON ALUMINUM – by Alisa Priddle (Motor Trend.com – May 24, 2016)

http://www.motortrend.com/

Ford made headlines when it gutted body shops at two pickup truck plants to build the new 2015 F-150 with an aluminum body instead of heavier steel, convinced the cost and risk were worth it for a lighter and better truck. General Motors is equally committed to reducing the weight of future vehicles but has taken a different approach. It quietly pursued ways to use existing body shops, tools, and equipment to spot weld future vehicles with a mix of materials, including aluminum — a strategy deemed less costly and disruptive.

After years of development and testing, engineers at GM are on the verge of putting a couple parts for the Cadillac CT6 sedan into production that are notable because they require welding steel to aluminum. GM is only months away from assembling seat backs and hood reinforcements using spot welding to join the two metals.

It is potentially a game-changer for an industry seeking the fastest and cheapest way to make lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Others have expressed interest in GM’s technology. Ford’s strategy, so far, is not being emulated by others.

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Iran Seeks Partners for $10 Billion Expansion in Aluminum – by Ladane Nasseri and Hashem Kalantari(Bloomberg News – May 11, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Iranian miners are seeking $10 billion to develop a domestic aluminum industry that could serve to export 60 percent of production to meet growing demand for the metal used in cars to jets and beverage cans. The raw material bauxite needed to achieve that goal is proving hard to find.

Iran’s aluminum production of 350,000 metric tons a year is below capacity of 470,000 tons because of a shortage of bauxite and insufficient electricity generation, Mehdi Karbasian, managing director of state-owned Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization, said at a conference in Tehran Wednesday. With additional investment, Iran could boost output to 1.5 million tons by 2025, he said.

Unlike Iran’s oil industry which was crippled because of international sanctions, the domestic aluminum business was held back because a 25-year effort to develop a bauxite mine in the West African nation of Guinea still hasn’t produced.

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Rio pushes button on $2.6b bauxite project – Kim Christian (Sydney Morning Herald – November 27, 2015)

http://www.smh.com.au/

Mining giant Rio Tinto has given the nod to its massive $US1.9 billion ($A2.63 billion) South of Embley bauxite expansion project in northern Queensland. Rio said the long-awaited approval would boost the company’s annual bauxite exports from Cape York by around 10 million tonnes per year as conditions in aluminium markets improve.

The global miner plans to initially produce 22.8 million tonnes of bauxite per year from 2019, replacing production from the depleting East Weipa mine 40 kilometres away. The project gives Rio the option of expanding production to 50 million tonnes a year in the future.

Rio has also changed the name of the mine to the Aboriginal word Amrun, a traditional indigenous name for the area. The expansion project involves construction of a bauxite mine as well as processing and port facilities on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula.

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Aluminum looks vulnerable to pullback, iron ore less so – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – April 28, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA – If there is a common theme emerging from the recent strong gains in commodity prices, it’s that the extent of the rally isn’t justified by fundamentals and is therefore largely speculative.

Assuming this market consensus is correct, it’s logical to assume that at some point the heat will go out of the market and prices will stabilize or retreat.

It would also be logical to assume that the gains in some commodities have been more justifiable than those for others, given the differences in supply and demand dynamics. The question then becomes one of which commodities will hold more of their gains and which will be most vulnerable to a sharper pullback.

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Aluminum Seen Riding for Fall as Chinese Speculators Pile In (Bloomberg News – April 26, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/

After steel comes aluminum. Futures traders in China have flocked to the lightweight metal used in beer cans and car parts, stoking a rally and setting the market up for a potential slump in the second half as smelters fire up new or idled smelters.

Aluminum is trading around a 10-month high on the Shanghai Futures Exchange after volume more than quadrupled in four days to about 1.04 million contracts on Monday, the most since December. That echoes the performance of steel reinforcement bar last week, when prices rose 20 percent in four days as trading ballooned.

While strong demand and tight supplies in the first quarter drove up aluminum futures, the risk is growing that prices will climb too far, according to analysts at CRU Group, AZ China Ltd. and Bloomberg Intelligence.

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Bauxite mining politicised; I would like to break that jinx: Tom Albanese – by Kunal Bose (Business Standard – April 18, 2016)

http://www.business-standard.com/

Interview with Chief Executive Officer, Vedanta Resources

The right place to build aluminium smelters is where bauxite, coal and capital are available, Vedanta Resources Chief Executive Officer Tom Albanese tells Kunal Bose. Ideally, there should also be an expanding local market for the metal. Albanese says India has it all. Edited excerpts:

Your chairman, Anil Agarwal, says India has abundant natural resources and demand potential to lift annual aluminium smelting capacity to 20 mt from 4.1 mt. Is he not too optimistic, since a lot of local capacity now remains idle?

The question is, will demand be there in future to support that kind of capacity build-up? For local demand of 20 mt, we have to have a very long-term perspective, pitched on multiple decades of eight per cent annual gross domestic product growth. Now, the issue is: From where will India get that big a volume of aluminium?

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Alcoa Looks to Finally Break Metal Shackles as Profit Sinks – by Sonja Elmquist (Bloomberg News – April 11, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Alcoa Inc. has an identity problem, and it’s something Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld is hoping to finally fix.

For years, the company tried to persuade investors to value it more for its engineering prowess than its exposure to a global metal glut. After all, it now gets more revenue from car, airplane and building parts than from primary aluminum. The stock, though, still trades more like a miner than a manufacturer, losing 26 percent over the past 12 months.

In September, Kleinfeld said he’d split the company, separating units that make metal products from those that make the metal itself. With the release of earnings results on Monday, investors will be watching for evidence Alcoa can boost sales enough in the downstream parts business to offset the falling metal price.

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UPDATE 1-Malaysia extends bauxite mining ban by another three months (Reuters U.S. – April 8, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Malaysia will extend its ban on bauxite mining by another three months, effective April 15, in order to clear stockpiles and remove the risk of the aluminium-making ingredient contaminating the country’s rivers, the environment minister said on Friday.

While lower output at the world’s top exporter of bauxite threatens to interrupt supply to the world’s biggest aluminium producer, China, traders expect the impact to be limited given China’s ample stocks of the raw material.

Malaysia’s largely unregulated bauxite mining industry has boomed in the past two years to meet demand from China, filling in a supply gap after Indonesia banned exports, but the frenetic pace of digging has led to a public outcry with many complaining of water contamination and destruction of the environment.

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‘Berserk’ Aluminum Boom Signals Ore Bonanza for China’s Quarry (Bloomberg News – March 30, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Key aluminum ingredient bauxite is shaping up as China’s newest obsession in its mission to secure raw materials and once again minerals-rich Australia is a major target.

China’s investment in Australia’s mining industry plunged along with the global commodities rout, dropping in 2015 to the lowest since 2008 as surging supplies created gluts of materials including oil and iron ore. It’s a different story unfolding for bauxite, with a potential step up in interest led by Aluminum Corp. of China, known as Chinalco, which confirmed it’s looking at investing in projects in Australia.

Demand in China for the aluminum needed in air conditioning units to airliners will rise by almost a third by 2020, according to Morgan Stanley, while the nation’s supplies of adequate raw materials to produce the metal are dwindling — spurring imports and encouraging new investments overseas in countries including Australia and Guinea.

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China Hongqiao Is Devouring The Global Aluminum Industry – by Gordon G. Chang (Forbes Magazine – March 20, 2016)

http://www.forbes.com/

On the 14th of this month, the chief executive of China Hongqiao Group, the world’s largest aluminum producer, said his company would raise annual capacity by 16% this year, spending 15 billion yuan ($2.3 billion). Zhang Bo’s announcement sent prices of the metal tumbling.

Last year, Hongqiao’s capacity hit 5.2 million tons. This year, the plan is to take that to just a few notches over 6.0 million.

There is already far too much aluminum capacity, both in China and elsewhere, and investors initially did not like Hongqiao’s debt-fueled plan. Shares of the Hong Kong-listed firm fell the following day.

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COLUMN-China should follow Elvis’s advice for more action, less conversation – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – February 24, 2016)

http://uk.reuters.com/

Feb 24 – If you were to pick one thing that would do the most to help embattled commodity producers around the world, dealing with China’s massive over-capacity would probably rank highest.

It’s no secret that China’s surplus capacity in steel, aluminium, cement, flat glass and other intermediate commodities is keeping prices low and threatening the viability of global resource companies, as well as the health of the Chinese economy.

There certainly have been repeated statements from Beijing that the issues are being tackled, and it appears the authorities have realised that excess capacity is a far bigger threat than what it was during the prior boom years, when double-digit economic growth rates masked mounting problems.

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