In the referenced book, the author details how the aluminum cartel was dismantled under the threat of WWII needs because of their failure to promptly address the needs of the United States.
the aluminium industry consumed 6% of all global coal-fired electricity in 2019 – more coal-fired electricity than is generated in the whole of Europe – and is actually becoming more reliant on coal at a time when the world is becoming less reliant on coal.
The aluminium sector has a pivotal role to play here. Accounting for 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, it generates around 2% of global human-caused emissions. Demand for aluminium, an essential material for several key industries including construction, transportation and power transmission, is expected to grow by more than 50% by 2050. As such, emissions must be addressed now.
Until exceptionally abundant electricity and the Hall-Heroult process, a french guy whose name I forgot discovered you could burn bauxite under a vacuum with elemental sodium. Which meant it was like a twenty step process that burned off other really expensive difficult materials to make.
In the same vein, the Washington Monument is topped with an aluminum pyramid. This material was selected because at the time of construction aluminum was still considered nifty and new.
If people are upset by so called "dumping" - can't they just let China charge more than they would have for this aluminum?
Aluminum has well known fixed costs in smelters, it's one of those products they use as an example where it may make economic sense to keep a smelter going (even if incurring losses / ) because the cost of shutdown.
Ie, a potline may take up to a week just to "turn off" and a huge amount of effort - think a month of full time work + weeks of troubleshooting as annode effect issues, alumina concentration and other bits settle down. Don't you basically have to recondition (fully, replace all anodes, dig out the crust) the pots, and even then you may be taking a bit hit on pot life with the cool down / reheat cycle?
I know the US has "anti dumping" rules regarding sugar as well - which I've been told contributes to a fair bit of corn syrup use.
I'm not that hung-up on the US blocking imports of cheap materials (if that's what the US wants to do), but how does the US get some third party country to grab this quantity of metal? Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
> Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. ... For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
Because you can either be part of the group of powerful nations that rules the planet (including through various global and regional trade arrangements, international organizations, military power, sanctions, banking/finance and so on), or you can be on the outs with them and they may choose to brutalize you at some point in that case.
The US, as one example, has a lot of levers. If you decide to try to operate outside of its preferences, it can trivially wreck you if you're a small nation. China for its part increasingly swings a big influence hammer, which is why so many nations are very afraid to even offend them. If you're a stray midling country out there, you generally don't get to just do whatever you want to, even if you're not signed on to various limiting agreements around eg dumping. The more powerful nations have specific interests, a specific way they think the world should be, and they have no qualms about being randomly hypocritical (at your expense).
Even most larger nations have to be quite careful. The West is growing quite tired of Erdogan for example and they will further crash Turkey's economy (further amplify the damage Erdogan is already doing) if they think it'll help get rid of him. Turkey can rather easily be smashed at this juncture, potentially resulting in civil war, rolling instability for years or decades, quasi Syriaification.
It might be in specific forms ready to be processed - eg. blocks of specific dimensions or weights.
After 10 years outside, it's probably covered in dust and grime, and gotten an oxide layer. It probably isn't immediately sellable to a car factory...
But it could be reprocessed very inexpensively and become sellable. The loss of value would probably be well under 1%.
People saying "it's so old, it's basically scrap" either don't know what they're talking about, or they're deliberately deceiving - and being market traders, I suspect the latter in the hopes of pushing market prices higher.
China produces most of the world magnesium supply. Production is down due to electrical power shortages and they have restricted exports in order to ensure supply for domestic needs.
OTOH, it's not used in huge quantities (vs. oil, coal, iron, etc.) - so it seem plausible that China could kinda corner the market. At a reasonable cost (for them). Especially if they're the ~only country bothering to run a strategy...
There's an ongoing theme with certain non-rare industrial materials like Aluminum/Aluminium, magnesium, and not-so-rare "rare" earths elements.
The materials are abundant in nature, however it's the ability or willingness to process those materials in country which is rare. For example, rare earths are dirty to process so developed countries have outsourced their pollution to China.
So the 'Buying spree' graph is apparently showing a surge of import. But it really doesn't show anything like that. Or am I just misunderstanding something?
The chart legend says it represents the total value of exports to Vietnam from its trading partners, equivalent to Vietnam's imports.
In 2015 and 2016 Vietnam's imports of aluminum were much larger than previous years and later years. The excess value over $4B (the level of subsequent years' imports) totals over $6B. I took 2015-16 to represent the surge of imports.
Ingots are rolled to produce sheet, which I think is the majority usage by weight of Al: https://www.metalex.co.uk/expert-aluminium-plate-suppliers-e... “The rolling process kicks off with massive, pre-heated metal sheet ingots weighing as much as 20 tons. The ingots tend to be around six feet wide, twenty feet long and over two feet thick.”
The article even has a graph that shows that stockpiles are very high. The doom seems to come entirely from projections due to China reducing production. The article doesn't explain why other countries cannot step up production to meet demand.
The article's quality is poor. It wasn't worth my time to read.
wombatmobile|4 years ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/03/how-aluminum-became-a-cash-c...
jonathanwallace|4 years ago
In the referenced book, the author details how the aluminum cartel was dismantled under the threat of WWII needs because of their failure to promptly address the needs of the United States.
openfuture|4 years ago
Invictus0|4 years ago
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aluminum-lawsuit-idUSKBN2...
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
adolph|4 years ago
https://ember-climate.org/commentary/2020/10/06/aluminium/
The aluminium sector has a pivotal role to play here. Accounting for 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, it generates around 2% of global human-caused emissions. Demand for aluminium, an essential material for several key industries including construction, transportation and power transmission, is expected to grow by more than 50% by 2050. As such, emissions must be addressed now.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/the-aluminium-industr...
AlexanderDhoore|4 years ago
No, we aren't becoming less reliant on coal. We should be but we aren't. Look at [1]. We actually consume more coal, oil and gas each and every year.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
AniseAbyss|4 years ago
hasmanean|4 years ago
Using electricity to heat anything is wasteful when it could be used to waste clock cycles on cryptocurrency instead, first.
jaclaz|4 years ago
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/51115/did-napole...
Anyway until the late second half of the 1800's, it was considered as valuable as gold, if not more (article in French):
https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/560
selectodude|4 years ago
Wild stuff.
FourHand451|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...
slownews45|4 years ago
Aluminum has well known fixed costs in smelters, it's one of those products they use as an example where it may make economic sense to keep a smelter going (even if incurring losses / ) because the cost of shutdown.
Ie, a potline may take up to a week just to "turn off" and a huge amount of effort - think a month of full time work + weeks of troubleshooting as annode effect issues, alumina concentration and other bits settle down. Don't you basically have to recondition (fully, replace all anodes, dig out the crust) the pots, and even then you may be taking a bit hit on pot life with the cool down / reheat cycle?
I know the US has "anti dumping" rules regarding sugar as well - which I've been told contributes to a fair bit of corn syrup use.
I'm not that hung-up on the US blocking imports of cheap materials (if that's what the US wants to do), but how does the US get some third party country to grab this quantity of metal? Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
adventured|4 years ago
Because you can either be part of the group of powerful nations that rules the planet (including through various global and regional trade arrangements, international organizations, military power, sanctions, banking/finance and so on), or you can be on the outs with them and they may choose to brutalize you at some point in that case.
The US, as one example, has a lot of levers. If you decide to try to operate outside of its preferences, it can trivially wreck you if you're a small nation. China for its part increasingly swings a big influence hammer, which is why so many nations are very afraid to even offend them. If you're a stray midling country out there, you generally don't get to just do whatever you want to, even if you're not signed on to various limiting agreements around eg dumping. The more powerful nations have specific interests, a specific way they think the world should be, and they have no qualms about being randomly hypocritical (at your expense).
Even most larger nations have to be quite careful. The West is growing quite tired of Erdogan for example and they will further crash Turkey's economy (further amplify the damage Erdogan is already doing) if they think it'll help get rid of him. Turkey can rather easily be smashed at this juncture, potentially resulting in civil war, rolling instability for years or decades, quasi Syriaification.
itronitron|4 years ago
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3784270/Chinese-bil...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-chinese-billionaire-...
Physkal|4 years ago
londons_explore|4 years ago
After 10 years outside, it's probably covered in dust and grime, and gotten an oxide layer. It probably isn't immediately sellable to a car factory...
But it could be reprocessed very inexpensively and become sellable. The loss of value would probably be well under 1%.
People saying "it's so old, it's basically scrap" either don't know what they're talking about, or they're deliberately deceiving - and being market traders, I suspect the latter in the hopes of pushing market prices higher.
goldenkey|4 years ago
I would guess the reason is similar and would be weathering/erosion due to being outside and pelted with sand/rain/etc.
ZiiS|4 years ago
baybal2|4 years ago
Why? No magnesium. And China don't let out its magnesium.
nradov|4 years ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/magnesium-shortage-in...
bell-cot|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium#Occurrence
OTOH, it's not used in huge quantities (vs. oil, coal, iron, etc.) - so it seem plausible that China could kinda corner the market. At a reasonable cost (for them). Especially if they're the ~only country bothering to run a strategy...
raldi|4 years ago
c_o_n_v_e_x|4 years ago
The materials are abundant in nature, however it's the ability or willingness to process those materials in country which is rare. For example, rare earths are dirty to process so developed countries have outsourced their pollution to China.
tokai|4 years ago
gshubert17|4 years ago
In 2015 and 2016 Vietnam's imports of aluminum were much larger than previous years and later years. The excess value over $4B (the level of subsequent years' imports) totals over $6B. I took 2015-16 to represent the surge of imports.
The price of Al seems to have been around 80 cents a pound at the end of 2016, http://m.kitco.com/getChartPage?symbol=al&width=438&height=2... (then select 5 years). At $1,600 a ton, that's nearly 4 million tons.
This more than covers the 1.8 million tons in the GVA stockpile.
munificent|4 years ago
robocat|4 years ago
Billets: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22aluminium+billets%22&tb... An example of dimensions: “Most of the produced billets by the South Aluminum Industries Complex are produced in the form of cylinders with a diameter of 280 (11 inches) and a length of 7,500 mm” and some details of their manufacturing process here: https://en.salcocompany.com/aluminum-billet/ Billets of various diameters are used in aluminium extrusion machines: https://www.aec.org/page/aluminum-extrusion-process-basics
Ingots are rolled to produce sheet, which I think is the majority usage by weight of Al: https://www.metalex.co.uk/expert-aluminium-plate-suppliers-e... “The rolling process kicks off with massive, pre-heated metal sheet ingots weighing as much as 20 tons. The ingots tend to be around six feet wide, twenty feet long and over two feet thick.”
zozbot234|4 years ago
moffkalast|4 years ago
shmerl|4 years ago
mleonhard|4 years ago
The article's quality is poor. It wasn't worth my time to read.