India’s Aluminum Producers, Like Steel Counterparts, Battle Rising Imports

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Last week, MetalMiner reported on the challenges India’s steel companies face in the form of cheaper imports, and their desire for the Indian government to impose an import tax.
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The woes of India’s aluminum producers, too, are similar.
Primary and secondary producers have started grumbling about cheaper imports eating into their aluminum business.
The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China has seen the dumping of aluminum finished products in India, not only from China but also from nations with whom India has a free trade agreement, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan.
Anil Agarwal, of the Aluminium Secondary Manufacturers Association, was quoted by the Business Standard newspaper recently as saying that the import of finished aluminum products into India had eroded the margins of medium and small players by as much as 7%.
According to estimates, such imports have gone up by over 50% year on year, which has put the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) businesses in peril. Total aluminum imports have grown 21% year over year.
Between April and October 2018, aluminum imports into India increased 24% year over year. In addition, low prices and rising production costs have also made life difficult for the domestic aluminum industry. Production costs, for example, have gone up as much as 30% over the past approximately four years.
Primary and secondary aluminum producers, like their steel counterparts, have been asking the Indian government to hike the import duty on primary aluminum to 10% from the current 7.5%, according to the Business Standard.
India’s domestic aluminum industry has about 3,500 MSME players, the Business Standard notes, while there are three large primary producers —Hindalco Industries, Vedanta and the state-owned National Aluminium Company (Nalco).
Scrap aluminum imports, too, have gone up dramatically.
But imports of aluminum scrap carry a 2.5% import duty, even though imports have gone up by about 27%, by the industry’s reckoning.
Indian producers lament they cannot compete with countries like China. The latter is able to produce aluminum at a cheaper rate because it follows the Shanghai Metal Exchange for price, which is U.S. $250-300 per ton lower than that on the London Metal Exchange.
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Incidentally, India has set a target of producing 10 million tons of aluminum by 2030, up from the present-day 3.4 million tons.

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