Aluminium market recovery to stretch beyond 2021, says Rusal

摘要

A meaningful recovery in the aluminum market will not come before 2021 at the earliest, and possibly only in 2022, or even 2023, according to Roman Andryushin, director for marketing and sales at the world's third-largest primary aluminium producer Rusal. This year is unlikely to see global aluminum demand and stocks return to 2019 levels because recovery may be both U-shaped and slow, Andryushin told S&P Global Platts in an interview.Smelters are mostly continuing to produce almost at the previous scale to preserve jobs, causing an estimated excess of 2 million-4 million mt/year of aluminum, the executive said. However, the market cannot sustain such imbalance long-term; producers will need to tackle surplus capacities, he said.