Light, strong and endlessly recyclable, but smelting it is really an electricity business.
Aluminium is made in two industrial steps. Bauxite is refined into alumina (aluminium oxide) with the Bayer process, and alumina is then smelted into metal by electrolysis, which takes roughly 13 to 15 MWh of electricity per tonne. That electricity intensity is why smelters cluster where power is cheap: hydropower in Canada, Norway, Iceland and Russia, gas in the Gulf, and coal in China and India. It is also why primary aluminium is better understood as stored electricity than as a mining product. The metal goes into transport, construction, packaging and electrical applications, and unlike most base metals the bulk of it is traded as alloys rather than as pure metal.
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Designations are indicative equivalents. Always confirm the exact standard, edition and temper or form on the purchase order and the mill certificate.
Primary aluminium smelter output by country, not mine output. China produces about 61% of the world's primary aluminium and its smelters are at capacity (about 45 Mt), so new smelter projects are being built elsewhere, including in Indonesia. Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.
Guinea alone mines about a third of the world's bauxite. Indonesia's output fell sharply after its 2023 ban on bauxite exports, and in August 2025 Guinea's government revoked bauxite licences held by a subsidiary of a UAE-based aluminium producer after a dispute over a planned alumina refinery, a reminder that feedstock supply is exposed to resource nationalism. Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.
USGS puts world bauxite reserves at about 29 billion tonnes, with resources of 55 to 75 billion tonnes, so there is no physical shortage. Guinea holds the most (7.4 Bt), followed by Australia (3.7 Bt), Vietnam (3.1 Bt), Indonesia (2.9 Bt), Jamaica (2.0 Bt) and Brazil (1.7 Bt); India holds about 0.65 Bt. The constraint on aluminium supply is not ore but power, alumina refining capacity and policy.
About two to three tonnes of bauxite make one tonne of alumina, and about two tonnes of alumina make one tonne of aluminium. China produces about 93 Mt of the world's 150 Mt of alumina (roughly 62%), followed by Australia (17 Mt), Brazil (11 Mt) and India (8.2 Mt). Indonesia is building refining capacity to use its own bauxite, including a 1 Mt/yr alumina refinery at Mempawah that shipped its first alumina in 2025. China's smelters are already running at their roughly 45 Mt capacity, so new smelting capacity has to be built elsewhere.
Recycling aluminium takes only about 5% of the energy of making primary metal, which is why scrap is so valuable and why recycled content is central to low-carbon aluminium claims. Industry sources estimate roughly a third of world aluminium supply now comes from recycled metal. In the United States, USGS reports about 3.6 Mt was recovered from scrap in 2025, of which 44% was old (post-consumer) scrap, equal to about 28% of apparent consumption. Because alloy chemistry matters, scrap is traded by specific grade (cast, wrought, UBC), and mixing grades lowers its value.
India is the world's second-largest primary aluminium producer, at about 4.2 Mt in 2025 according to USGS (flat on 2024), and the fourth-largest bauxite miner (25 Mt), with about 8.2 Mt of alumina refining. Output is concentrated in three groups: Vedanta (including BALCO), Hindalco and the state-owned NALCO. Most Indian smelters run on captive coal-fired power, which ties their cost position to Indian coal supply and to emissions rules rather than to hydropower. For buyers, domestic primary metal competes with imported metal and scrap, so import parity (LME plus premium plus duty and freight) sets the effective price.
Aluminium trades on the LME as primary ingot of at least 99.70% purity (P1020A). The physical price is LME plus a regional premium, and premiums are where policy shows up: in 2025 the United States imposed a 25% Section 232 tariff on aluminium (raised to 50% for most countries by June), which lifted US premiums well above those in other regions. When a quote looks cheap, check whether it is LME-only or delivered duty-paid.
Alumina is priced separately from metal, on indices, and bauxite is mostly sold CIF China. Many smelter supply contracts link alumina to a percentage of the LME aluminium price. Traded forms include primary ingot, T-bar and sow for remelting, extrusion billet, rolling slab, and secondary (recycled) alloy ingot. Wrought alloys follow the Aluminum Association four-digit system: 1xxx is commercially pure, 3xxx adds manganese, 5xxx magnesium, 6xxx magnesium and silicon, and 7xxx zinc.
For aluminium, specify the alloy and temper, not just the metal. A 6061-T6 request and a 6061-T651 request are different material for machining. Ask for mill test certificates, confirm whether the price is LME-linked or fixed, and when buying imported metal compare duty-paid landed cost, not the ex-works quote.
Talk to a SpecialistProduction and reserve figures are USGS estimates for 2025 unless stated. Figures are rounded and change with each annual revision.