Aluminium giant EGA scripts home-grown success story
realised and the rise of EGA looks prescient, as aluminium has become the world’s ‘go-to’ metal due to its strength, lightness and nearinfinite recycling capability.
Today, EGA’s two UAE operations sit just a few miles from Dubai Marina and the world-scale Khalifa Port of Abu Dhabi, with additional facilities as far afield as China and the Republic of Guinea.
EGA has helped the UAE to become the world’s fourth largest aluminium producer. It produces more than 2.4 million tonnes of aluminium per year, contributing two to three per cent of the UAE’s non-oil gross domestic product (GDP), while the UAE’s domestic aluminium sector employs between 27,000 and 30,000 people.
Emirates Global Aluminium’s Jebel Ali operation in dubai is one of the world’s largest single-site primary aluminium smelters.
aerospace industries. They also produce a range of alloys for automotive manufacturers, where they are used for strong and lightweight items such as wheel rims, suspension parts and engine blocks.
Our products have historically been used in solid form, but by the end of this year, we will begin supplying some of our customers in Al Taweelah with molten liquid metal.
Most of EGA’s annual production is value-added products, with about 90 per cent of total production being exported across the world. The company’s key markets are Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and the Americas.
Controlling value chain
Today, EGA is making considerable leaps to ensure that it protects of eGA’s products are exported across the world its future growth by becoming an integrated aluminium producer able to control its processes from mine to metal.
We’ve identified the need to control key parts of our value chain. To do this, we have begun developing a bauxite mine in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. Bauxite is the main mineral from which aluminium is derived. Our concession contains more than one billion tonnes of some of the highest quality bauxite in the world and we will have a production capacity of 12 million tonnes per annum, starting from 2018. The mine will also give us a substantial new revenue stream from exports of bauxite to Asia.
In the aluminium production process, bauxite must be refined into alumina, which is the raw material used in our smelters. To that end, we have also begun construction of the UAE’s first alumina refinery adjacent to our operations in Al Taweelah. The refinery will produce two million tonnes of alumina each year, reducing our dependency on alumina imports by more than 40 per cent.
Alumina capacity
Once complete, Al Taweelah Alumina will cater to more than 80 per cent of EGA’s alumina requirements. Al Taweelah Alumina will also contribute substantially to the UAE’s economic diversification by accelerating the development of the aluminium cluster in Kizad. It is envisaged that phase one will add Dh1 billion to the UAE’s annual GDP.
By investing in these upstream assets, EGA is giving the UAE strategic control of aluminium production. And as EGA expands upstream and downstream to become an integrated producer, this dramatic leap forward in growth will also enable lower costs and efficient and sustainable production. The writer is executive vice-president, upstream, at Emirates Global Aluminium. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy.