China's aluminum consumption is expected to peak at 44 million metric tons (tonnes)/year by the end of 2020, meaning that the domestic aluminum consumption still has the growth space of more than 10 million tonnes, estimated by Wen Xianjun, vice-president of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNIA), at a recent forum.
China's aluminum consumption will likely stand at 32.8 million tonnes in 2016, up 7.2 percent year on year, said Wen. Supplies in the aluminum industry have maintained a double-digit growth this year. In the first ten months of 2015, the country yielded 26.46 million tonnes of electrolytic aluminum, up 11.3 percent year on year and 47.35 million tonnes of aluminum products, up 10.6 percent year on year.
Despite a fall in consumer demand caused by the drop in investments in the downstream property market, the aluminum industry still earned considerable profits. In the first ten months of the year, the domestic aluminum industry earned a profit of 42.5 billion yuan, up 30 percent year on year.
The mineral mining and dressing, and smelting sectors reaped profits of 2.6 billion yuan and 42.1 billion yuan, respectively, in January-October, while the aluminum smelting sector incurred a loss of 2.2 billion yuan in the period, according to Wen.
Wen pointed out that despite an obvious slowdown of aluminum consumption in the traditional fields, its consumption in the new fields such as light weight commercial cars, building templates, aluminum alloy overpass, aluminum alloy maintenance boards, new energy bus, and aircraft manufacturing has become the new growth points in the future. In the first ten months of the year, the domestic electrolytic aluminum consumption increased 8.8 percent year on year.
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