China¡¯s Aluminum Production to Double over the Next Five Years

In spite of low primary metal prices, rising power costs, reports that a significant proportion of China’s smelting capacity is losing money at current prices, and widespread predictions of smelter closures, analysts suggest Chinese smelting capacity is set to almost double over the next five years.

Hu Changping of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association predicted capacity would jump above 40 million tons by 2015 from 25 million tons at the end of this year – production is not running at capacity, hence the difference between the 19.6 and 25.0 million tons numbers. Hu is quoted as saying China has completed the building of 2.75 million tons of new aluminum smelting capacity so far this year, of which about one million tons has started commercial production.

He went on to say that in 2012, about 4 million tons of new capacity is due to kick off production and the bulk will come from the resource-rich western provinces, especially Xinjiang, boosting the annual capacity to nearly 30 million tons. About 10 million tons of planned new capacity would be built in the northwestern region of Xinjiang by 2015, taking total capacity to the region of 40 million tons.

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