Alumina giant offers mining technology in return for 30pc share in joint venture
Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco), the mainland's sole provider of alumina, reportedly has wrested a 30 per cent stake from an alumina project that threatens its dominant position.
Chalco and entrepreneur Liu Yongxing's East Hope Group have reached an agreement to form a joint venture on the project, Bloomberg quoted a report by Xinhua-run China Metals as saying. Chalco officials would not comment.
The 1.05 million-tonne-a-year project is expected to be the first large-scale alumina plant to compete with Chalco, whose annual production capacity of the mineral stood at 5.4 million tonnes at the end of last year.
A doubling in alumina prices in the past year due to global shortages has seen the emergence of a slew of new projects.
Chalco reportedly has been using its stranglehold over alumina, which is refined from bauxite and smelted into aluminium, as a bargaining chip in return for equity stakes in new market entrants.
East Hope needs a patented technology held by Chalco to process bauxite mined on the mainland, since the raw material usually has a higher silica content than bauxite found in other parts of the world.