MINEX Forum

Tag: European Aluminium

  • European Aluminium Calls for Indirect Ban on Russian Metal After Turkey Loophole Allows Sanctioned Aluminium Into EU Market

    European Aluminium Calls for Indirect Ban on Russian Metal After Turkey Loophole Allows Sanctioned Aluminium Into EU Market

    Industry association European Aluminium has called on the European Union to introduce a targeted indirect ban on Russian aluminium in the bloc’s next sanctions package, warning that a significant loophole allows Russian primary metal to enter the EU market via third-country processing — undermining existing direct import sanctions and sustaining Russian export revenues.

    The association’s #NoSecondPassport campaign argues that Russian primary aluminium can be sold to producers in third countries, processed into semi-finished or finished products, and then exported to the EU as goods originating from the processing country rather than Russia. European Aluminium says this circumvention places unfair competitive pressure on European producers that have already moved away from Russian supply, while generating almost $10 billion in export revenue for Russia last year.

    Turkey is highlighted as the clearest example of the loophole in practice. Russia supplied approximately 20% of Turkey’s primary aluminium imports in 2025, making it Turkey’s second-largest supplier. The association also flags the Gulf supply crisis as a compounding risk: Turkey relied on Gulf countries for around 42% of its aluminium ingot imports in 2025, and the association warns that regional instability or further upward price pressure could push Turkey and other third countries to increase their reliance on discounted Russian supply.

    European Aluminium is calling for the indirect ban to be backed by stronger enforcement mechanisms, including mandatory reporting of the first and second largest country of smelt and the last country of cast, enabling customs authorities to trace the upstream origin of aluminium entering the EU. The package would also include targeted customs checks on high-risk third-country imports, ongoing monitoring of import flows from countries known to import large volumes of Russian aluminium, and specific scrutiny of billets, extrusions and other semi-finished products.

    The association frames the issue as a strategic autonomy concern, arguing that weakening Europe’s aluminium industrial base at a moment when the sector is increasingly tied to defence, clean energy and broader industrial resilience carries risks that extend well beyond commercial competition.

  • Rio Tinto-Backed Arctial Aluminium Smelter in Finland Targets 2029 First Metal as Final Investment Decision Set for 2027

    Rio Tinto-Backed Arctial Aluminium Smelter in Finland Targets 2029 First Metal as Final Investment Decision Set for 2027

    The Arctial aluminium smelter in northern Finland, backed by Rio Tinto, is targeting first hot metal production in the second half of 2029, contingent on a final investment decision being taken in 2027, the project’s chief commercial officer has said.

    Maxime Vandersmissen outlined the timeline while speaking at the CRU World Aluminium Conference in London on Tuesday. The project is designed to produce 610,000 metric tonnes of aluminium per year, which would make it one of the largest new smelter developments in Europe in decades.

    The Arctial project has attracted attention as Europe seeks to reduce its dependence on aluminium imports and rebuild domestic primary production capacity, which has contracted significantly over recent years due to high energy costs. Finland’s abundant renewable energy resources and competitive power pricing have positioned the country as one of the few viable locations on the continent for new large-scale smelting capacity.

  • European Mining Industry Backs Unified EU Carbon Reporting Framework

    European Mining Industry Backs Unified EU Carbon Reporting Framework

    Euromines and leading European industry associations have issued a joint statement urging the European Commission to adopt a harmonised, EU-wide approach to carbon emissions reporting across value chains.

    The move comes in support of the Clean Industrial Deal (CID), a flagship initiative aimed at aligning Europe’s climate ambitions with its industrial strength and strategic autonomy. As the mining sector continues to accelerate its role in a cleaner and more competitive economy, the statement outlines key principles to ensure that CID delivers meaningful progress.

    Specifically, the signatories are calling for:

    • A unified EU methodology for carbon accounting, consistently applied across current and forthcoming legislation
    • Streamlined reporting frameworks to reduce policy fragmentation and improve regulatory clarity
    • Mandatory use of verifiable, primary emissions data to enhance transparency and ensure credibility

    The European mining sector positions itself as ready to collaborate with EU policymakers and stakeholders to develop a robust, reliable, and harmonised carbon accounting system—one that supports both the bloc’s decarbonisation goals and its industrial resilience.

    This call for consistency and data-driven transparency underscores the industry’s commitment to a net-zero future and a more sustainable resource economy.

  • Dismay after EU rejects ‘Green Pool’ for industrial energy users in Greece

    Dismay after EU rejects ‘Green Pool’ for industrial energy users in Greece

    The Green Pool scheme was initially floated by the Greek government in July 2022 as part of moves to lower the cost of electricity, which went through the roof last year after Russia invaded Ukraine.

    It was designed to help large industrial consumers of electricity like aluminium, steel, glass, or cement, to jointly sign up to corporate power purchasing agreements (PPAs) for renewable electricity, under the supervision of a public body acting as a single buyer and seller for participating companies.

    The scheme was aimed at mitigating the costs of re-shaping industrial production to match the variable nature of renewable electricity generation coming from wind and solar power installations – so-called firming or shaping costs.

    These costs were identified by the European Commission as a key obstacle preventing industrial consumers of electricity from signing up to Renewable Energy Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), which Brussels is now promoting as part of its proposed electricity market reform.

    However, the scheme was turned down on Friday (6 October) by the European Commission’s competition directorate, according to Mytilineos, the Greek aluminium and energy company.

    The main reason put forward by the Commission, according to the Greek company, is that renewable PPAs could not be regarded as “decarbonisation” activities from electro-intensive industries because they are not part of so-called scope 1 emissions – those that producers are directly responsible for.

    The underlying rationale communicated to the Greek authorities, they added, was that the Commission does not want energy-intensive industries to benefit from subsidised electricity prices.

    The World Bank has identified aluminium as a “high-impact” and “cross-cutting” metal for green energy technologies ranging from electric vehicles to solar photovoltaics and geothermal.

    But in Europe, the industry has declined steadily over the years with production dropping from over 4.5 million metric tons 15 years ago to 2.7 million currently.

    Contacted by Euractiv, the European Commission did not return emails and phone calls asking for comment. The Greek permanent representation in Brussels also declined comment.

    Metal industry dismayed

    On the industry side, trade association Eurometaux reacted with dismay.

    “We’re surprised and disappointed that the European Commission rejected Greece’s ‘Green Pool’ proposal,” said Guy Thiran, the director general of Eurometaux, which represents non-ferrous metals producers and recyclers.

    For Thiran, the Greek scheme “ticked all the boxes” in terms of decarbonisation, competitiveness, and renewables deployment. “It was a crucial model that would also help the metal and power sector’s wider decarbonisation in other EU member states,” he said in emailed comments to Euractiv.

    According to him, the scheme would have been instrumental in keeping aluminium manufacturing within the EU’s border at a time when bauxite, alumina and aluminium were added to the EU’s list of critical raw materials.

    “Electricity-intensive metals producers are still on their knees from the energy crisis” caused by the war in Ukraine, Thiran said. “If Europe is serious about keeping its strategic metals production ‘Made in Europe’, we urgently need real solutions like the Green Pool,” he added.

    Paul Voss, director general of European Aluminium, a trade association, was equally upset.

    “We are deeply troubled and genuinely shocked by the rejection of this innovative initiative,” Voss told Euractiv in emailed comments.

    “Not only does this decision dangerously undermine the case for investment in solar and wind in Greece, it sends a clear message that energy-intensive industry, even when it’s powered by renewables, simply isn’t wanted in Europe anymore”.

    According to Mytilineos, the Green Pool would have led directly to 4 GW of new wind and solar investments in Greece while securing affordable electricity prices for energy-intensive industries.

    Moreover, the scheme could have easily been replicated in other countries, which is why it was supported by other EU trade associations like BusinessEurope and WindEurope.

    For the aluminium industry, the frustration is made even greater by all the recent EU talk about “strategic autonomy” in the raw materials and energy sector.

    In December last year, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised a “new assertive industrial policy” with streamlined EU state aid rules in response to the US massive green subsidy programme, the Inflation Reduction Act.

    Last month, the Commission chief announced that the European Green Deal was entering a new phase focused on industrial policy, starting with the launch of a series of Clean Transition Dialogues with individual sectors of industry.

    “The future of our cleantech industry has to be made in Europe,” von der Leyen declared in her annual state of the Union speech to the European Parliament.

    However, the Commission’s decision on the Green Pool scheme appears to contradict those declarations, according to European Aluminium.

    “How can we possibly reconcile this approach with all the recent discussion about strategic autonomy and sustainable industry?” Voss asked. “Outsourcing heavy industry to other, more carbon-intensive regions might look like an easy way to save energy and reduce emissions in Europe, but its ultimate impact will be to fatally compromise our economy, our security and our environment.”

    “This cannot be the way forward,” he added.

  • Essential integration of mining with circular economy highlighted at FT Mining Summit

    Essential integration of mining with circular economy highlighted at FT Mining Summit

    As the circular economy grew in importance, many miners were also starting to look more closely at recycling operations, it was stated during a panel discussion covered by Mining Weekly.

    Financial Times commodities correspondent Harry Dempsey, who moderated, referred to the apparent exponential rise of recycling and the circular economy as demand for critical minerals rose for the global energy transition.

    Panel participants were Glencore global recycling head Kunal Sinha, Norsk Hydro executive VP corporate development Trond Olaf Christophersen, International Copper Association material stewardship global director Louise Assem, and Circular CEO Douglas Johnson-Poensgen.

    Cross-portfolio upcoming demand for critical minerals is roughly calculated to be six times greater than current supply, pointing to the need for as much responsible mining production as possible between now and 2050.

    “Even if you ramp up all the responsible production you can between now and 2050, we think there’s still a gap. It’s hard to quantify, but there’s still a gap. So, how you meet that gap is through what we would like to think of as responsible consumption, which is essentially your circular economy,” said Sinha.

    “The circular economy is not just recycling. It’s product life extension, repair, reuse, all of that, and the very last step is recycling, so it’s not a competition with primary mining because you need as much mining as you can responsibly do, but you also need to consume more responsibly and have a circular ecosystem.

    “Every mining company is different. Your portfolio is different. I can only speak for Glencore. From my point of view, our vantage point comes down to three things from our portfolio. One is assets. We have two types of assets. We have assets that have been recycling for a long time. These are very complex metallurgical assets, so what you can do is operate at a massive scale where you blend both the primary feeds and the recycled feeds, very difficult to process materials,” said Sinha, who added that Glencore also had other built assets that could be repurposed, exemplified by lead refinery outside London, parts of which are being repurposed for electronics recycling and potentially also battery recycling.

    “So, instead of building greenfield, you can pivot and use these existing assets to do it much faster,” Sinha noted.

    Then there was risk management: “From our experience to do recycling properly, the risk is very high. To manage that risk, you need the same skills as commodity trading because you’re not sitting on a deposit of copper and know exactly what it is in there and you’re mining it and you have a plan. You have to buy this feed across hundreds of suppliers. You don’t really know what you’re getting, so you have all kinds of risks in terms of financial risk, counter-party risk, a lot of these risks, which is the same as in commodity trading, so our trading DNA helps with the recycling.

    “In a world where you have a lot of primary production into the energy transition, as we have, and a history of recycling, you can easily combine those two to close the loop,” added Sinha.

    ALUMINIUM

    When it comes to aluminium, Christophersen reported that the circular economy was already in place, with roughly one-third of the total aluminum metal supply being recycled material.

    In more mature markets such as in Europe and the US, 40% to 45% of the total metal production is based on aluminium scrap.

    “A significant share of the total metal supply is secondary aluminium and part of the circular economy,” Christophersen emphasised.

    Going forward, Norsk Hydro is of the view that growth in the circular part of the market will be much higher than the growth in the primary side.

    The main drivers of this are expected to be customer demand, with car makers giving much more attention to sustainable supplies, as well as regulations of countries. These include end-of-life vehicle regulations in Europe and waste shipment directives in the US.

    More than two-million tons of aluminium scrap in the US and a million tons-plus of aluminium scrap in Europe currently being exported could be recycled internally.

    In addition, considerable investment going into scrap-sorting technology development could also result in much more secondary aluminium being recycled within the US and Europe.

    Norsk Hydro, an integrated aluminium and renewable energy company, mines and refines bauxite and smelts and recycles aluminium.

    More than half of its aluminium metal production is based on secondary material, with mining and scrap dealing being completely different businesses, with recycling being very much more commercial.

    “You have to deal with a lot of small suppliers on the scrap side. ‘Scrap is not scrap’. It depends a lot on the quality that you are buying, so it’s a completely different business and you need a completely different business model in order to operate in the recycling business compared to the mining business,” said Christophersen.

    COPPER

    Assem reported that the metals value chains were already circular, “and mining plays a role in that because without the stocks from mining, there would be no circular value chain, there would be no stock to recycle”.

    “So, they are already playing a role, although mining has been left out of the perception of what a circular economy looks like. There is huge demand increase expected for many of the metals, including copper, and that demand is already being filled by both primary and secondary material, and it will continue to be filed by both, as it should be,” Assem said.

    “There are many other drivers, like the throw-away society and the negative perception of mining that does exist, driving what is an attractive concept in the circular economy. It’s nice to think that if we can be fully circular, we won’t have to dig things out of the ground and cut down trees, for example. But the reality is that we do need both.

    “There are also regulatory drivers. Europe has a lot of legislation around the circular economy itself and also around sustainable products, along different aspects of the circular value chain. In Asia, there are also lots of circular pieces of legislation in Japan, China and South Korea and they are going at it from different perspectives.

    “In the US it is slightly different. There’s more of a carrot than a stick, like you would get in Europe. You also have the original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that are driving things from the bottom, particularly when we look at targets around recycled content for end-user products. So, that’s also driving things up the supply chain,” Assem added.

    BATTERY MATERIALS

    In Europe, OEMs using batteries are expected to have a per battery carbon footprint, said Johnson-Poensgen, whose company is pursuing traceability in the battery value chain, which means that probably from 2026, consumers will be able to compare embodied carbon in a battery.

    He reported that the battery in an electric vehicle accounts for roughly half the supply chain’s contribution to the carbon footprint in manufacturing each vehicle and recycled battery materials have half the energy requirement to turn scrap into battery-grade materials.

    Indicated during the panel discussion was that going forward, markets would likely be more intent on procuring recycled secondary material than primary material in the interests of global sustainability and mitigation against climate change

  • Carbon tax loophole could flood Europe with emissions heavy metal

    Carbon tax loophole could flood Europe with emissions heavy metal

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    Brussels/London | European aluminium producers are warning that a loophole in the EU’s carbon border tax will lead heavily polluting exporters such as China to circumvent the rules and flood the bloc with low cost, emissions heavy metal.

    Under the EU’s proposed carbon border tax – a levy on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced during the manufacture of goods imported into the bloc – offcuts of aluminium which are remelted can be sold as a zero carbon product even if the virgin material was produced with coal or other fossil fuel power.

    Aluminium companies including Norsk Hydro and Speira told the Financial Times that the so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) incentivised producers outside the EU to generate as much scrap as possible which would then be remelted and exported to Europe.

    “This loophole enables the widespread greenwashing of imported aluminium products and undermines the effectiveness of CBAM in preventing carbon leakage,” said Hilde Merete Aasheim, chief executive of Norway’s Norsk Hydro.

    Lightweight and durable, aluminium is vital for building aircraft and cars and is used in solar power components. However, it is the most energy-intensive metal known in the industry and is sometimes referred to as “solid electricity”.

    Aluminium production accounts for around 3 per cent of the world’s industrial emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

    The adjustment mechanism will initially be introduced without charges during a trial phase that starts in October this year; producers will have to pay the levy from 2026.

    In the initial phase, it will cover seven different sectors including aluminium, iron, steel, fertiliser and hydrogen.

    The aim is to prevent products made with lower cost but dirtier production processes from undercutting companies within the EU that have to comply with the bloc’s stricter climate laws and pay for pollution under the EU’s emissions trading system.

    EU officials hope that it will promote more rapid decarbonisation in industrial sectors around the world.

    In the EU, smelters emit around 6.8 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of aluminium, compared to a global average of 16.1 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram, according to the trade body European Aluminium.

    But the loophole risks undercutting its purpose, say its critics. Ana Šerdoner, senior manager in industry and energy systems at the environmental NGO Bellona, said that some manufacturers “might use [this loophole] to reshuffle their exports a bit and make sure those scraps are remelted and sold to Europe as carbon neutral”.

    Europe’s aluminium producers’ claims come on top of concerns about a lack of rebates for exports containing imported aluminium that had been taxed, finished products such as cars or cans containing highly polluting aluminium being allowed in without paying for emissions generated in metal production and the loss of the sector’s free emission allowances.

    “The details and current design raise more concerns than opportunities,” said Volker Backs, head of public affairs at Speira, a large German aluminium rolling and recycling company, who warned of CBAM’s impact on Europe’s broader manufacturing competitiveness.

    Paul Voss, head of European Aluminium, said that if the measures were poorly designed the sector “will be undercut so badly there will be nothing left to decarbonise and it won’t help the planet”.

    Europe’s aluminium industry has already been ravaged by higher energy costs after Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to approximately half of the EU’s smelting capacity to shut.

    For some, opposition to CBAM is more fundamental. Nick Keramidas, executive director of EU Affairs at Greek aluminium producer Mytilineos Energy and Metals, said that the domestic producers facing soaring costs needed a level playing field.

    “CBAM threatens to cripple European production out of serving the European and global market. It would actually cause the problem it seeks to address by causing more carbon leakage,” he said.

    The CBAM has been heavily contested by countries outside the EU, which argue that it punishes producers in less developed nations that are economically reliant on exports to the bloc.

    The European Commission, which is consulting on the final details of CBAM until July 11, declined to comment.

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