Aluminium Corporation of China Limited’s (Chalco) 2018 annual aluminium production has reportedly recorded a growth of 16 per cent to come in at 4.17 million tonnes. The news came after the state-run company formally announced in a presentation to analysts reviewed by Reuters on March 29.
After taking over Yunnan Aluminium last year, Chalco’s unlisted parent company Chinalco’s group capacity increased to 5 million tonnes and above.
The jump was enough for Chalco to overtake Russia’s Rusal as the world’s second-biggest publicly traded producer of the metal. Rusal produced 3.753 million tonnes in 2018.
Before this, Beijing-based Chalco could beat Rusal’s aluminium production in 2012, when both the firms had produced more than 4 million tonnes, according to a review of company filings.
Later in late 2017, Chalco started a 500,000 tonnes per year aluminium smelter in Inner Mongolia, which resulted in a considerable hike in its annual production despite the shutdown of some production towards the end of the year on occasion of rising aluminium prices.
Even in 2019, the company has already shuttered 200,000 tonnes of capacity, as of now. Rusal, on the other hand, is planning to launch the second line of its Boguchansk aluminium smelter in Siberia by the end of this month. For the matter of fact, Rusal’s stakeholder En+ said that the Russian aluminium giant would keep its aluminium production stable at 3.8 million tonnes in 2019.
As far as Chalco’s alumina production is concerned, it has recorded a rise of 5.5 per cent to 13.51 million tonnes in 2018.