By Min Zhang and Twinnie Siu
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Aluminum Corp of China Ltd, known as Chalco, said on Tuesday its net income surged 564.6% in 2021 to log its best performance in 14 years, thanks to rising alumina and aluminium prices and higher production.
Average global alumina prices rose 22% last year, Chalco said, while Shanghai aluminium futures jumped more than 30% and LME three-month aluminium was up 42%.
That helped the Chinese aluminium giant earn net profit of 5.08 billion yuan ($798.65 million) last year, it said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the highest since 2007, while revenue rose 45% year-on-year to 269.7 billion yuan.
The world’s top producer of aluminium raw material alumina said its output of the feedstock rose 11.7% year-on-year in 2021 to 16.23 million tonnes.
Its aluminium production rose 4.6% to 3.86 million tonnes, gaining for the first time in three years.
That sent aluminium output at parent company Chinalco – which also controls Yunnan Aluminium – to around 6.16 million tonnes from 6.1 million tonnes in 2020.
China’s nonferrous industry had weathered headwinds from the country’s efforts to cut carbon emissions, with aluminium makers suffering a power crunch and forced to cut production.
Yunnan Aluminium said on Monday that the power restrictions had led the company to fail to meet its annual aluminium production targets, with output declining 4.4% to 2.3 million tonnes.
Chalco logged a net loss of 227.9 million yuan in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared with net income of 2.2 billion yuan in the third quarter.
The company said it had managed to ensure supply and adjust production to minimize impact from the power curbs and from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A jump in alumina prices since the second half of 2021, as well as higher aluminium prices due to global tight supply, had shored up the company’s performance, it said.
In a separate filing on the Shanghai bourse, Chalco said it aims to issue debt financing tools worth up to 50 billion yuan in 2022, and to invest two billion yuan to set up an electrode material unit.
($1 = 6.3607 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Min Zhang in Beijing and Twinnie Siu in Hong Kong; Editing by Jan Harvey)
