With the help of both the government's macro-control policies
and the market's regulation, the over-investment of electrolytic
aluminum has been basically curbed in China.??
Statistics from the China Nonferrous-Metal Association show that
since last August, there have been no companies starting new
electrolytic aluminum projects. Those projects under construction
or waiting for construction have been postponed or canceled.
Since 2001, China's domestic demand for electrolytic aluminum
increased at a speed of 1 million tons per year, which gave rise to
blind development and over-investment of the industry, said Kang
Yi, director of the association.
In 2003, more than 25 billion yuan (US$3 billion) was invested
in the sector and the production capacity reached 8.34 million tons
by the end of the year and is expected to reach 10 million ton in
2005.
The overheating of the industry makes the energy and resources
strain even worse.
As a high energy consumption industry, every ton of electrolytic
aluminum costs 15,000 kw/h of electricity. In 2003, four percent of
total consumption of electricity was used in the sector. Besides,
half of alumina, raw materials for electrolytic aluminum, depends
on import.
To curb the over-investment of the sector, the central
government has banned approval of new electrolytic aluminum project
since last May. At the end of last year, the State Council repeated
its request.
Currently, 12 percent of companies are still using the backward
self-calcine slot technique in the production. But the situation is
changing, said Kang, adding that new projects built in the past
three years are all using advanced, environmentally-friendly
techniques.
(Xinhua News Agency June 6, 2004)