Asian Metal visits Shandong Chiping Xinfa Huayu Alumina and Jinan Haichuan Carbon

On January 23, 2015, Mr. Friday Gao, senior analyst of Asian Metal visited Shandong Chiping Xinfa Huayu Alumina Co., Ltd. and Jinan Haichuan Carbon Co., Ltd.

On the morning of January 23, Mr. Gao visited Chiping Xinfa and talked about alumina and bauxite markets with Mr. Chen Lizhi, general manager of the company, Mr. Liu Jilin and Mr. Cui Gang, vice general managers of the company.

According to Mr. Cui, they now consume around 1 million tonnes of bauxite per month and began buying bauxite Al 42-43% Si 4% from Malaysia with the volume at around 400,000t per month. They also import around 300,000-400,000t of bauxite from Australia each month.

Mr. Chen said that in Shandong province, their alumina refinery is running at the output of around 4 million tonnes per year. They deliver all the alumina product to Xinjiang for their aluminum ingot production.

In the afternoon, Mr. Gao visited Haichuan Carbon and talked about carbon anode market with Mr. Chen Jianyu, deputy manager of Domestic Trading Department. Because of the declining aluminum ingot price, the carbon anode price dropped by around RMB400/t (USD65/t) to RMB2,700-2,800/t (USD435-452/t) in the past half year, Mr. Chen noted.

According to Mr. Chen, there are around 8 carbon anode producers with the total annual capacity at around 2.1 million tonnes in Pingyin. “We focus on Chinese domestic market,” said the source, noting the plant is running at the output of 220,000tpy based on the capacity of 230,000tpy.