The Middle East's largest aluminum company reports that after an attack on their factory, it has experienced an "out-of-control shutdown" and has already begun selling aluminum raw materials.

Latest market news says that after Iran’s missiles and drones attacked Al Taweelah (Taweelah) smelter at United Arab Emirates’ largest aluminum producer Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) over the weekend, it has been forced to halt operations due to a “runaway shutdown” of its smelting equipment.

As background, late Saturday Beijing time, EGA said in an announcement that earlier that day its Taweelah production site in the Khalifa Economic Zone in Abu Dhabi was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones and suffered severe damage.

Although the official side has not publicly disclosed progress on “damage assessment” since then, international aluminum prices have continued to rise steadily since the weekend and are already approaching their highest levels since 2022. In addition to Emirates Global Aluminium, Bahrain Aluminium, another major aluminum producer in the region, also confirmed that its facilities were attacked over the weekend. Both plants are among the world’s largest aluminum producers, and their output for 2025 is expected to reach 1.6 million tons each.

In the evening of Wednesday, media reports citing insiders said that when the Taweelah smelter located on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi was attacked last week, it caused a power outage; equipment known as “potlines” was forced into a runaway shutdown, causing the metal to solidify inside the smelting circuit, resulting in severe damage to production and operations.

In such a situation, Natixis SA analyst Bernard Dahdah made an assumption in a recent report, saying that the solidification of metal in the smelting process, the damage caused may take at least a year to repair. This could cause the aluminum market next year to shift from a surplus supply of 2 million tons to a supply gap of about 1.3 million tons.

As supporting evidence for this information, earlier on Wednesday there were reports that Emirates Global Aluminium had already started selling large quantities of alumina in the market, which is a key raw material for producing aluminum.

It is understood that this week Emirates Global Aluminium proposed to sell several batches of alumina expected to be shipped between April and June. The aluminum supply chain can be simply described as first mining bauxite, then refining it into alumina, and finally smelting it into finished metal.

Emirates Global Aluminium itself can produce alumina, and it typically also purchases large quantities of this raw material to supply the Taweelah smelter located on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi and a second smelter located in Dubai.

（Source: Caixin Group）