Aluminium supply hit hard
Major aluminium smelters in the Gulf have been damaged or cut production after attacks and gas shortages, and operators warn it could take at least a year to fully restore output at facilities like Al Taweelah. That kind of long outage tightens a metal that sits inside cars, aircraft and packaging, turning what looked like a commodity shock into an industrial-capacity problem. (alcircle.com) (agbi.com)
Aluminium looked scarce before the Gulf crisis. Now parts of the industry are simply broken. The sharpest blow landed at Al Taweelah in Abu Dhabi, one of the biggest aluminium production complexes in the world. Emirates Global Aluminium said on April 3 that Iranian missile and drone attacks caused significant damage across the site, forcing an emergency shutdown of the smelter, casthouse, power plant, alumina refinery, and recycling plant. The company’s first estimate is brutal. Restoring primary aluminium production could take up to 12 months. In 2025, that smelter alone produced 1.6 million tonnes of cast metal. The refinery beside it produced 2.4 million tonnes of alumina, nearly half of EGA’s own needs. (media.ega.ae) That matters because aluminium smelters are not like mines, where lost tons can sometimes be replaced elsewhere. They are giant electrochemical systems that run hot and continuously. When a smelter goes down hard, restarting it is slow, technical, and expensive. EGA says it must repair damaged infrastructure and then progressively restore each reduction cell. That is why a strike in one industrial zone can echo for a year through car plants, aircraft supply chains, and packaging lines far from the Gulf. (media.ega.ae) The wider market had very little slack even before the attacks. Global primary aluminium production in 2025 was about 73.8 million tonnes, with China at roughly 45 million tonnes and effectively up against its long-running capacity ceiling. Outside China, the biggest producers were already running close to full tilt. The Gulf had become one of the few large, energy-advantaged aluminium hubs left, with the UAE producing about 2.7 million tonnes and Bahrain about 1.6 million tonnes in 2025. (alcircle.com) That helps explain why this is not just an Abu Dhabi story. The same regional shock has hit Bahrain and Qatar in different ways. Aluminium Bahrain began a controlled shutdown of three reduction lines in mid-March, taking 19% of its 1.62 million-tonne annual capacity offline as Hormuz disruptions choked the flow of raw materials and blocked exports. Qatalum in Qatar started curtailing production on March 3 after a gas-supply warning, then stabilized at about 60% of capacity once reduced gas deliveries were confirmed. (mining.com) Put those pieces together and the real problem comes into focus. The Gulf does not just ship aluminium. It also imports what smelters need to keep running, especially alumina. When shipping through the Strait of Hormuz seizes up, the region gets squeezed from both ends. Metal cannot leave easily, and feedstock cannot arrive easily. That is why even plants that were not physically hit have cut output. The bottleneck is not only price. It is the physical continuity of an industrial system built around steady flows of gas, ore, power, and ships. (mining.com) Markets noticed immediately. On March 30, benchmark three-month aluminium on the London Metal Exchange jumped 6% and traded near four-year highs after the attacks on Gulf smelters. Reuters reported the contract at $3,492 a tonne early that day, after touching $3,546.50. Price spikes are the visible part of the story. The less visible part is harder to fix. If Al Taweelah really needs a year, the world is not waiting for cheaper metal. It is waiting for furnaces, power systems, and reduction cells in a damaged desert complex to come back one by one. (money.usnews.com)
