Australia’s move to ban alumina exports to Russia is heaping more pressure on Moscow-based aluminum giant United Co Rusal International PJSC and pushing up prices of the so-called everywhere metal.
Aluminum jumped and Rusal shares tumbled as Rio Tinto Group, operator of the Queensland Alumina Ltd joint venture with the Russian company, said it would comply with all of Canberra’s directions.
Rio reiterated that it was in the process of terminating its commercial relationships with Russian businesses following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Rusal holds a 20 percent stake in the Queensland joint venture.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that a ship due to dock this week to collect a load of alumina — the key ingredient used in making aluminum — bound for Russia would not deliver its cargo as he announced the ban on Sunday.
KEY SUPPLIER
Australia supplies nearly 20 percent of Russia’s alumina and its exports of aluminum ores, including bauxite, to Russia have also been prohibited.
Supplies of aluminum — used in everything from cans to airplane parts and window frames — were running low even before war in Europe threw global commodity markets into turmoil. This latest development threatens to add even more inflationary pressure to the global economy.
Russia is a key supplier of aluminum to markets including Turkey, China and Japan.
The metal rose to US$3,554 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange as of 1:48pm in Singapore and is up about 27 percent this year.
Rusal said in a statement that it was evaluating the impact of the ban. Rio plans to stop supplying bauxite to, and buying alumina from, Rusal’s Aughinish plant in Ireland, people familiar with the matter said earlier this month.
While aluminum has not been targeted by global sanctions, Rusal — which needs bauxite and alumina to feed its plants — is facing disruption to its supply chains as companies pull back from doing business with Russia.
The company has also slashed output from its Nikolaev alumina refinery in Ukraine due to logistical and transport challenges arising from the war.
CARGO SWAP?
Australia said the ban would apply to “all relevant shipments” to Russia. It is common practice for alumina producers to swap cargoes with other suppliers in different locations to save on freight costs.
However, it is unclear if Rusal would be able to get around the prohibition by doing this with shipments from its Queensland plant.
Rusal was founded by Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, who retains an interest via his shareholding in Rusal’s majority owner En+ Group International PJSC.
The Australian government last week announced a new round of sanctions against oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including Deripaska.
EN+ Group earlier this month said it was considering a potential carve out of Rusal’s international business, creating a new company to house its alumina, bauxite and aluminum assets across the globe, which would no longer have any Russian ownership.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS