China to be net aluminium buyer

China, the world's largest producer and consumer of aluminium, may become a net importer of the metal from 2009, Peter Finnimore, sales director of United Co Rusal, said in Shanghai today.

The country will probably account for 36 per cent of global consumption of the metal used in beverage cans and aircraft by 2010, up from 25 per cent currently, he told a conference. Rusal, owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, is the world's biggest aluminium producing company.

Increased demand will lift prices of aluminium, which have lagged behind other base metals in London in the past five years, rising less than half as much as copper and nickel. A reversal in China's aluminium market may follow a similar path to oil, where the nation's imports have more than doubled since 2001, contributing to a four-fold gain in prices.

China is the key driver of global aluminium demand which will grow by 3.6 per cent annually, according to the Moscow-based company. Rusal expects the metal to reach a record $4,000 a tonne as early as next year, Alexander Bulygin, chief executive officer, said in March. The metal for three-month delivery ended at $2,568 a tonne in London on Friday.

Rusal plans to buy a cathode factory in China's Shanxi province by the end of the year, Grigory Goryachikh, general manager of Shanxi Rusal Cathode Co, said in an interview at the conference today. Cathode is used in aluminum production.

Shanxi Rusal is in talks with several cathode factories in Shanxi province of north China, Goryachikh said. The wholly owned Chinese unit of Rusal is currently able to produce 15,000 tonnes of cathodes a year and the company consumes around 45,000 tonnes globally, he said.

World aluminium demand is forecast to increase by 11 million tonnes by 2010 with China, Russia and India accounting for 75 per cent of the increase, and more than double with a gain of 45 million tonnes by 2030, Finnimore said in his presentation.