Quebec is the heart of Canada’s aluminum industry, hosting eight of the country’s nine smelters. The industry exports $10.8 billion worth of the metal annually. After producers such as Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Alouette import bauxite from Jamaica, Brazil and Guinea they process the ore into aluminum. The United States has been the top purchaser of almost all of Canada’s aluminum production, and about 75% of its imported aluminum comes from Canada. But with U.S. tariffs on Canadian aluminum rising from 10% to 25% and then to 50% in June, producers last spring began shipping more of the metal to Europe to avoid financial losses. Those shipments jumped to about 50,000 tonnes from April to June, more than half of last year’s total in just three months. The Northern Miner takes a peek at how much aluminum has been diverted to European markets and how that compares with pre-tariff-period sales.
Design: James Alafriz
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