Medium Term - Capacity and Industry Structure

摘要

Table 6 shows that at the end of 2006 world primary aluminium smelter capacity was 37.89 million t/y at 257 identified plants. Of the world total 7.4m t/y was the older Soderberg anode technology, a proportion that is steadily falling as Soderberg smelters are closed or converted to prebaked anode technology. Table 7 lists all committed changes to primary smelter capacity. By 2011 these projects will add 7.12 million tonnes (net) to world capacity, of which 1.8m tonnes is in 2007. Since a major project of US Rusal (formerly Russian Aluminium) at Taishet in Russia (750,000 t/y) has been added and UC Rusal has indicated its strategic intention to expand capacity to meet the expected long-term import requirements of China. The reconstruction of the smelter in Kazakhstan and the Qatalum smelter project (585,000 t/y) of Hydro Aluminium in Qatar has also been added as a committed project. The scale of these projects indicates how the design scale of new smelters has increased, from perhaps 250,000 t/y in the 1990's to over 500,000 t/y now.