UAE's DUBAL Q2 output rises 8.3%

OUTPUT HIKE: State-owned smelter Dubai Aluminium Co's (DUBAL) second-quarter output rose 8.3 percent. (Getty Images)

State-owned smelter Dubai Aluminium Co's (DUBAL) second-quarter output rose 8.3 percent to 237,630 tonnes due to higher regional demand, a senior company official said on Monday.

"Our targeted production for 2008 remains approximately 950,000 tonnes," Khalid Buhumaid, a DUBAL general manager, told Reuters in an interview.

"Our production rose on higher demand for aluminium in the region and globally."

Around 22 percent of DUBAL's output last year was consumed in the Middle East, making it the company's third-largest market after Asia and Europe, Buhumaid said.

First-half output rose 6.6 percent to 466,012 tonnes.

The Gulf Arab oil-exporting region, basking in windfall oil revenue from a more than six-fold rise in oil prices, is witnessing a construction boom with more than $2 trillion worth of projects either announced or underway, the Middle East Economic Digest said in March.

Apart from hydrocarbons, aluminium is one of the largest industries in the United Arab Emirates, an OPEC oil-exporter which comprises seven emirates including regional trade and tourism centre Dubai.

In 2007, DUBAL produced 889,548 tonnes of extrusion billets and foundry alloys, used mainly in construction, transport and electrical industries.

In the second quarter, DUBAL merged potlines 3 and 4 into a new Potline-3. It also added eight new pots, bringing the total in the combined Potline-3 to 272 pots.

"The eight new pots start-up was finished in early July, but due to the tie-in, the full 272 are only scheduled to be live by the end of July or early August this year," Buhumaid said.

DUBAL aims to be among the world's top five aluminium producers by 2015. Its expansion plans include the construction of the world's largest green-field aluminium smelter complex, for $8 billion, a joint venture with Mubadala Development Co.

The Emirates Aluminium (EMAL) complex in Abu Dhabi would eventually have an output capacity of 1.5 million tonnes a year.

Russia's Rusal now operates the world's biggest aluminium smelter at Bratsk.

DUBAL's only competitor in the Gulf Arab region, Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), which produces 830,000 tonnes of the metal a year, said earlier this year it was mulling plans to raise its output by up to 45 percent to about 1.2 million tonnes. (Reuters)

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