2017年几内亚有望超越澳大利亚成为中国最大铝土矿进口来源国

2017年几内亚有望超越澳大利亚成为中国最大铝土矿进口来源国

据彭博社9月9日报道，国际铝业研究所（the International Aluminum Institute）秘书长Ron Knapp先生近日在上海举办的一个研讨会上发言中表示，几内亚有望在2017年超越澳大利亚成为中国最大的铝土矿进口来源国。

他表示，2014年几内亚对华出口铝土矿数量微乎其微、可以忽略不计；2015年几对华出口铝土矿30万吨，2016年有望达到1300万吨；2017年则有可能超越澳大利亚一跃成为中国最大的铝土矿进口来源国。但他未明确预测2017年几内亚对华出口铝土矿的数量。

他表示，到2020年，全球每年需要新增加4000万至5000万吨铝土矿供应。从中期、长期来看，几内亚将成为全球重要的铝土矿供应国。几内亚向亚洲大规模出口铝土矿将为新进入者确定市场边际。

他表示，2015年中国铝材产量占全球总产量的55%，与2005年相比产能增加了25%。中国目前最大的铝生产商-中国宏桥集团-已经一跃成为全球最大的铝生产商。中国铝产能的快速增加提高了中国对于进口铝土矿的需求。2010年中国共进口铝土矿3000万吨，而2015年则增加到5600万吨。

根据美国地质调查局的统计数据，几内亚拥有全球已探明铝土矿储量的四分之一。

他表示，中国成功地实现了铝土矿进口多元化的战略，成功地化解了印度尼西亚2014年起禁止铝土矿原矿石出口、马来西亚出口大大幅度下降的危机。

他表示，澳大利亚2015年对华出口铝土矿1960万吨，2016年预测为1900万吨。马来西亚2015年对华出口铝土矿2400万吨，而2016年预计下降到不足800万吨；原因是马来西亚禁止对环境造成污染的铝土矿的开采，该禁令延长到2016年12月31日。

他表示，马来西亚铝土矿储量不大，只是一个短期的热点地区。

驻几内亚使馆经商处

2016年5月16日

Guinea Goes From Zero to Hero for World’s Top Aluminum Maker

Bloomberg News

September 9, 2016

Guinea will pass Australia to become China’s main source of bauxite next year as the world’s biggest aluminum maker boosts imports of the raw material from the West African nation that supplied almost nothing just two years ago.

Shipments from Guinea to China will reach as much as 13 million metric tons this year, up from just 300,000 tons in 2015 and negligible volumes in 2014, according to Ron Knapp, secretary general of the International Aluminum Institute. That will take Guinea past Malaysia to become the number two supplier, and shipments will advance in 2017 to beat Australia, Knapp said Thursday in an interview at an industry conference in Shanghai. He didn’t give specific volume forecasts for 2017.

“Guinea has a medium- and long-term role in world bauxite supplies,” Knapp said during a presentation at the conference. The world will need between 45-and-50 million tons of extra annual bauxite supply by 2020, and “the arrival of Guinea bauxite in the Asian region will help determine market boundaries for other entrants,” he said.

Rapid Growth

China accounted for 55 percent of world aluminum output last year, up from 25 percent a decade earlier, and its top producer China Hongqiao Group Ltd. is now the world’s biggest maker of the metal. That rapid growth has boosted demand for bauxite, with China’s total imports rising from 30 million tons in 2010 to 56 million tons last year. Guinea has about a quarter of the world’s known reserves, according to the United States Geological Survey.

China has “succeeded in diversifying” its bauxite purchases after Indonesia banned shipments of unprocessed ores in 2014, and shipments from Malaysia slumped this year, Yin Zhonglin, senior engineer at Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., said at the conference. “Guinea and Brazil with stable grades have emerged as major suppliers along with Australia. In the longer term, Laos and Cambodia could also become main suppliers, but are currently limited by transportation infrastructure.”

Closely held Hongqiao group controls bauxite resources in Guinea and ships the raw material to its own refineries in China’s coastal Shandong province. Investment in bauxite mining in Guinea will exceed $2 billion in a few years, giving the country a major role in the global market, its mining minister Abdoulaye Magassouba said in July.

Australia will ship an estimated 19 million tons of bauxite this year to China, down from 19.6 million tons in 2015, while Malaysia’s shipments will sink below 8 million tons, down from 24 million tons in 2015 after the government banned mining on environmental grounds, according to the institute’s data. A moratorium on mining, put in place this year, was extended on Wednesday until Dec. 31. Malaysia has relatively small reserves and was only a “short-term hot spot” for the industry last year, Knapp said.