The largest aluminum company in the Middle East, all three major plants have halted production.

On April 3, the Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) Group issued an announcement regarding the incident in which its Al Taweelah aluminium plant site was attacked by Iran. It disclosed the preliminary results of its operational assessment. Currently, all operations at the site—its aluminium smelter plant, alumina refinery plant, and recycled aluminium plant—have been completely shut down. Meanwhile, the aluminium smelter capacity is expected to be fully restored, which may take up to 1 year.

Previously, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency, on the 29th, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement saying that the Revolutionary Guard Corps “effectively” carried out attacks on U.S.-linked aluminium plants located in the UAE and Bahrain using missiles and drones. The statement said that the two aluminium plants are related to U.S. military and aerospace industries. They are, respectively, facilities of the Emirates Global Aluminium Group and of the Aluminium Industry Group of Bahrain.

On April 3, the Emirates Global Aluminium Group stated that this Iranian missile and drone attack targeted the Khalifa Economic Zone in Abu Dhabi, and that the Al Taweelah site suffered severe damage. All areas, including the aluminium smelter plant, casting workshop, power plant, alumina refinery plant, and recycled aluminium plant, have had their relevant production facilities urgently shut down completely.

When can production resume?

Regarding aluminium smelting, preliminary assessments indicate that the original aluminium production capacity can be fully restored, which may take up to 12 months. Before the smelter plant restarts, EGA first needs to repair the damaged infrastructure and gradually restart all electrolytic cells.

At the same time, based on the results of the final damage assessment, the Al Taweelah alumina refinery plant and the recycled aluminium plant are expected to restore some capacity earlier.

In terms of the scale of involved capacity, in 2025 the Al Taweelah aluminium smelter plant’s casting aluminium production was 1.6 million tons. Currently, EGA holds large inventories of aluminium products in transit by sea, within the UAE, and in some overseas regions. In 2025, the Al Taweelah alumina refinery plant produced 2.4 million tons, meeting 46% of the company’s total alumina demand; the recycled aluminium plant’s annual production capacity is 185,000 tons.

Previously, analysts from the China International Capital Corporation (CICC) Nonferrous Metals team concluded that the duration of the ongoing U.S.-Israel and Iran conflict has already reached 1 month, and that the conflict has not shown signs of de-escalation; the impact on the aluminium industry chain in the Middle East region and the global aluminium supply chain may continue to increase.

First, production safety risks may further expand the shutdown scope within the region. One is that disruptions in energy supply may lead to unstable power supply to aluminium smelter plants, making safety incidents such as short circuits more likely. Two is that the restoration costs and timeline brought by emergency production shutdowns are high and long. At present, the risk of energy supply being cut off in the Middle East region is high, and the risk of being attacked is rising. For safety and business considerations, more aluminium plants may choose to proactively reduce load or shut down their aluminium smelter plants.

Second, European energy prices have surged, and European aluminium smelting companies face shutdown risks. Since the U.S.-Israel and Iran conflict began, Europe’s natural-gas benchmark price has risen by 80% month-on-month. Because about 60% of European power prices are determined by natural gas, if energy prices continue to climb, it may force European aluminium smelting to cut output or even shut down.

CICC believes that as the gap between aluminium supply and demand widens and the U.S.-Iran conflict increases supply fragility, together with the global synchronous effect of proactive fiscal and monetary policies, aluminium prices may set new highs; when costs are at a low level, profit per ton of aluminium is expected to widen further.

Author: Huo Xingyu

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Editor: Shi Xiuzhen SF183