De-globalisation: Can Europe supply itself with steel and aluminium?
Seite 2: Aluminium: Demand and recycling
(Bild: Curioso.Photography/Shutterstock.com)
For aluminium, the other bulk metal product, the balance does not look so good from a German perspective. More than three million tonnes of aluminium are needed in Germany every year. About half of it goes into aircraft and car manufacturing. The construction industry, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering as well as packaging manufacturers are the other customers. This contrasts with German production of 1.2 million tonnes in 2019.
Germany relies on recycling of recyclable materials. 692 thousand tonnes come from this source, reports the Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie (GDA). There is a good chance that the production of recycled aluminium will increase worldwide. This is because the technical effort required to recover the aluminium is much smaller compared to the production of new aluminium, because the metal melts at low temperatures. This reduces the energy costs to about five per cent. Currently, 20 per cent of global production comes from recycling.
Hardly own production
Without recycling, neither Europe nor Germany will be able to meet their aluminium needs. Aluminium is the third most common element in the earth's crust, but in Europe there are only small deposits in Greece that are worth mining. The most important aluminium mineral is bauxite. But the technical process of producing it is complex. According to calculations by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, almost nine tonnes of rock have to be mined for one tonne of aluminium, a third of which ends up as overburden on the slag heap.
Typical bauxite deposits are only two to ten metres thick, so open-pit mining requires a lot of land to extract larger quantities. Australia, China and Guinea in West Africa are currently the largest mining countries. When there was a military coup in the West African country in September 2021, the price of aluminium immediately rose on the world market.
Germany has hardly any possibilities to process the bauxite-containing rock itself. This only happens in small quantities; the ores used in this country come from Guinea, Liberia and Australia. The rocks have to be processed via an intermediate product. First, alumina (aluminium oxide) is extracted from bauxite; this often does not happen in the mining countries.
Aluminium world power China
China, Australia and Brazil shared more than 75 per cent of the world market for alumina in 2020, with more than half coming from China. Mostly, mining, transport and processing are in the hands of the same company. The Chinese process their own bauxite deposits and also import from Guinea, Australia and Indonesia.
The alumina is also often further processed in an aluminium smelter in another country. For this purpose, the aluminium oxide is converted into pure metal at high temperatures using a lot of energy during electrolysis. Anyone who wants to produce aluminium needs a lot of electricity and is dependent on cheap energy. That is why energy prices also have a major influence on the choice of location.
According to the International Aluminum Insititut (IAI), 57 percent of newly produced aluminium in 2021 will come from China. This is followed by India (5.7 per cent), Russia (5.4 per cent) and Canada (4.6 per cent). The Gulf states UAE and Bahrain are also among the seven largest producers worldwide.
(jle)
