‘Drastic slump’ for aluminium

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 3

‘Drastic slump’ for aluminium

NZPA-Reuter Sierre The aluminium industry was in w'hat had been described as the worst recession it has ever experienced, said Alusuisse’s chief financial executive, Mr Thomas Gasser, in Sierre, Switzerland, yesterday. A world-wide decline in demand was cutting capacity use at smelters, he said. A company report to shareholders said that present inventory levels had been reached only in the' crisis year of 1975. Inventories of aluminium producers in the Westernworld had soared to 2.8

million tonnes, compared with 1.4 million tonnes in May, 1980. The industry had expected a brief and relatively mild recession but it.; was now suffering world-wide from a drastic slump in smelter capacity use and earnings, with sales faltering and prices declining. Primary aluminium production had been cut, especially in the United States and in Japan, and 87 per cent of the smelter capacity of the Western world was being used, compared with 92 per cent at the beginning of the year, the report said.