Australian Aluminium Council  
 

Australian Aluminium Statistics

Production in Australia

The Australian bauxite, alumina and aluminium industries continue to perform strongly, contributing significantly to economic growth and regional development - supplying both world and national demand.

  • Australia is the world's largest producer of bauxite, producing 67 mt  of world bauxite production in 2007.
  • Australia is the largest producer and exporter of alumina, producing 19 mt (24%) of world alumina production in 2007.
  • Australia is the fifth largest aluminium producer, with 2.0 mt (5.3%) of world aluminium production in 2007.
  • In 2007, the bauxite/alumina/aluminium operations employed over 13,800 direct employees and around 3,500 contractors. 

Australian alumina production levels in 2008 are expected to increase further as more capacity comes online.

Aluminium metal production is essentially at full production for the installed capacity. No new smelter potlines are under construction in Australia at the present time.

Significant aluminium production growth has been occurring in southern Africa, the Middle East and China - and this is expected to continue, along with growth in Iceland and Russia.

Extrusion, rolled products, diecasting

The downstream processing sector continues to face strong market competition from imported products from Asian producers.

Imports have grown significantly, removing the opportunity for local producers to grow their output in line with the overall market growth forextruded products; domestic extruders are seeing their market share eroded, while volumes remain relatively flat — with very tight profit margins:

  • extrusion imports: +135% over 2000
  • sheet and plate imports: + 86% over 2000
  • total semifab imports: +104% over 2000

These growth rates for imports of aluminium processed products continue to place domestic producers under heavy competitive pressure — and will continue to force local operators to rationalise their production to specialise in product lines with higher values and provide other customer-responsive services.

      Production 2007