Aluminum from bauxite to beverage can: mined, refined, smelted

By Alykhan Virani. Published 2026-10-10.

Part 6 of the series From source to store.

In 2022 China’s smelters used an estimated 540 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity to make aluminum, more than twice the 258 TWh used by Europe including Russia (119 TWh), the Gulf (Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates; 90 TWh) and North America (49 TWh) combined (European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2024, citing data from the International Aluminium Institute, IAI). Remelting needs far less: the Aluminum Association and the Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI) cite about 80% less energy for a can made from recycled than from primary aluminum, based on a 2021 life-cycle study (2024 report). On this site, aluminum production means primary metal smelted from ore (USGS, 2025 estimates), while trade data count unwrought aluminum (HS code 7601), which includes alloys and remelted metal, so the two do not reconcile. Bauxite, the ore (HS 2606), is a separate commodity, and alumina (HS 281820) sits on the bauxite page. Production counts come from the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 and trade counts from CEPII BACI for 2024, which do not reconcile.

How it is mined

Aluminum makes up about 8% of the Earth’s crust, and bauxite, its main ore, lies near the surface, so mines are open-cut (IAI, The Aluminium Story, year not stated). The IAI says topsoil and overburden are returned to the pit at the operations that report to it, and that some operators wash the ore to remove clay before shipping (IAI, year not stated).

Three countries dug most of it. In 2025 the world mined 440 million tonnes of bauxite: Guinea 150 million (34.1%), Australia 97 million (22.0%) and China 87 million (19.8%), together 75.9% (USGS, 2025 estimates).

From bauxite to alumina

Nearly all alumina, or aluminum oxide, comes from the Bayer process: caustic soda dissolves the ore’s aluminum minerals at 140 to 280 degrees Celsius, aluminum hydroxide is crystallized from the liquor, and roasting at up to 1,100 degrees turns it into alumina powder (IAI, year not stated).

Two rules of thumb give the ratios. USGS gives a rule of thumb of 4 tonnes of dried bauxite to 2 tonnes of alumina to 1 tonne of aluminum (USGS, 2026), and the IAI gives a global average of about 3,000 kilograms of bauxite per tonne of alumina and about 2,000 kilograms of alumina per tonne of metal (IAI, year not stated). The 2025 totals give 2.9 tonnes of bauxite per tonne of alumina, near the IAI figure, and 2.0 tonnes of alumina per tonne of metal, matching both (USGS 2025 estimates, excluding US bauxite output; ratios are this site’s arithmetic).

Each tonne of alumina also leaves about 1.2 tonnes of highly alkaline bauxite residue, called red mud for the iron compounds that color it, and the IAI reports that 2.5 million to 5 million tonnes of residue are used each year (year not stated), against about 180 million tonnes generated by 150 million tonnes of alumina at 1.2 tonnes per tonne (2025; this site’s arithmetic).

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, estimates for 2025.

Smelting

In the Hall-Héroult process, developed independently in 1886 by Charles Martin Hall and Paul Héroult, a direct current runs through alumina dissolved in a molten cryolite bath at about 960 to 980 degrees Celsius. Liquid aluminum sinks to the bottom of the pot. Each pot makes about a tonne a day, and a smelter chains hundreds of them into potlines (IAI). IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, says operators have a strong incentive to run smelters at constant load to avoid operational risks, and that a pot’s thermal balance must be kept to prevent damage (IRENA, 2025).

IRENA’s 2025 report compiles estimates from sources published between 2011 and 2024 that put energy at about a quarter to a third of production costs in alumina refining and primary smelting, and says smelters have historically been built where power is cheap, such as near hydropower in North America and on natural gas in the Middle East.

China smelted 45.0 million tonnes in 2025, 60.8% of the world’s 74.0 million. India (4.2 million tonnes), Russia (3.9 million), Canada (3.3 million) and the United Arab Emirates (2.7 million) followed, and the top five made 79.9% (USGS).

Moving it

The three stages differ sharply in value per tonne. World exports in 2024 averaged about $63 a tonne for bauxite, $477 for alumina and $2,585 for unwrought aluminum (CEPII BACI, export value divided by weight). Ore ships long distances: the world exported 183.2 million tonnes of bauxite (HS 2606) in 2024, and Guinea sent 122.5 million (66.9%) and Australia 41.4 million (22.6%), together 89.5% of the tonnage. China imported 159.6 million tonnes, 87.1% of the total, and Guinea supplied 76.8% of China’s import value ($7.59 billion) with Australia 18.4% (CEPII BACI). The shipping consultancy Maritime Strategies International (MSI) reported that capesize bulk carriers (170,000 deadweight tonnes and more) in the Guinea trade stayed about 13 days on average at Guinean ports in 2024, with peaks of 17 days in March 2025 and 15 days in April 2025 (MSI, 25 September 2025).

Alumina moves too: 37.3 million tonnes in 2024, led by Australia at 14.3 million tonnes (38.2% by weight, 33.8% by value) and Brazil at 7.4 million (19.9% by weight, 18.8% by value) (CEPII BACI, HS 281820). Unwrought aluminum (HS 7601) was exported at 30.7 million tonnes worth $79.30 billion. By weight Canada sent 3.00 million tonnes (9.8%), Russia 2.85 million (9.3%) and the United Arab Emirates 2.78 million (9.1%), and the United States bought 4.01 million tonnes (13.1%); by value Canada has 10.4%, the United Arab Emirates 9.3% and Russia 9.1%. Canada’s sales to the United States, $7.61 billion, were 92.0% of Canada’s export value (CEPII BACI).

Contracts say who pays the freight, which FOB and CIF explains. The London Metal Exchange (LME) contract trades lots of 25 tonnes (2% more or less) as ingots of 9 to 26 kilograms or T-bars and sows of up to 788 kilograms, held in approved warehouses (LME Rulebook Part 6, High Grade Primary Aluminium, Release 121, January 2023; unchanged in the exchange’s March 2026 reform draft). The World Bank’s LME cash series averaged $3,283 a tonne in September 2026, 23.7% above a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Novelis, a rolled-aluminum maker, says primary aluminum can generally be bought at the LME price plus a local market premium that varies with delivery region, alloy, form (ingot or molten) and purity (Novelis Form 10-K, fiscal year ended 31 March 2026).

Rolling, canning and getting it to you

Rolling mills turn cast metal into coil, either by hot rolling a slab or by casting molten metal directly into sheet, and can makers set their own specifications for the sheet (Novelis Form 10-K, fiscal year ended 31 March 2026). Novelis says beverage packaging is the largest end use by shipment volume in its Europe, Asia and South America segments. In the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026 it had total shipments of 3,731 kilotonnes, of which 3,557 kilotonnes were rolled products; recycled content was 61% of rolled-product input, and it said it recycled over 85 billion used beverage cans (Novelis Form 10-K).

Can makers then form the coil into bodies and ends. Ball, the self-described largest producer in North America, estimated the North American aluminum beverage container industry at about 139 billion units and said it shipped about 50 billion in North and Central America in 2025, about 36% of shipments in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It sells cans to fillers of soft drinks, beer and energy drinks under multi-year contracts, and most of its beverage container contracts pass aluminum price changes through to customers (Ball Form 10-K, 2025, company estimates).

The can comes back. In 2023, 43.0% of the aluminum beverage cans shipped in the United States, corrected for imports and exports, were recycled by consumers: about 602,000 tonnes of 1.40 million, converted from pounds by this site. The same report puts recycled content of the average US-made can at 71% for production year 2022 (Aluminum Association and CMI, December 2024). Europe, meaning the EU, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, recycled 76.3% of its aluminum beverage cans in 2023 (Metal Packaging Europe and European Aluminium, 17 February 2026). The US figure is a consumer recycling rate corrected for trade, and the European figure is compiled from deposit-return, producer-responsibility and Eurostat data, so the two are not like for like. At the level of the metal, IAI figures for 2019 put primary aluminum at 186 gigajoules per tonne from mine to cast house and recycled aluminum at 8.3, a 95.5% saving, which differs from the can-level 80% above because the scope differs (IAI).

Where the chain is thin

Why do power prices close smelters?

IRENA says higher electricity prices can make a smelter uncompetitive and that energy price rises in Europe in 2022 forced several smelters to curtail or close (IRENA, 2025). Slovalco in Slovakia, with 160,000 tonnes a year of capacity, ended primary production in January 2023 after high energy costs in 2022 (Joint Research Centre, 2024). Water can curtail output too. Yunnan, with about 10% of China’s smelting capacity and about 80% of its power from hydroelectricity, asked smelters to cut output three times between September 2022 and March 2023, by 10%, then 20%, then 40%, after a heat wave and low rainfall cut generation (Nikkei Asia, via Renewable Energy World, 23 March 2023).

What if one country supplies the ore?

Guinea sent 91.3% of its 2024 bauxite export value to China (CEPII BACI). In August 2025 Guinea’s government revoked the bauxite licenses of a subsidiary of a UAE-based aluminum producer and reallocated them to a state-backed company; USGS ties the move to a dispute over building a refinery (USGS, 2026). MSI says Guinean exports typically fall in the West African monsoon, when heavy rain disrupts mining (MSI, September 2025).

Can a regulator cut a refinery’s output?

On 27 February 2018 the environment secretariat of Pará state formally ordered Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte refinery in Brazil to cut calcined alumina output by 50% after it missed a 26 February deadline to bring water basins at its DRS1 residue site to 1 meter of freeboard, a level Hydro said it reached on 27 February; the order followed extreme rainfall on 16 and 17 February (Hydro, 26 and 27 February 2018). China refined 62.0% of the world’s alumina in 2025 (USGS), and this site holds no outage records for individual refineries.

Follow the data

The aluminum commodity page holds the smelter and metal-trade tables, and the bauxite page holds the mining, alumina and ore-trade tables. The aluminum price page charts the LME series, and the trade flows report maps the Guinea-China and Canada-US corridors. The producing, exporting and processing guide explains why each stage ranks different countries first, and the glossary defines smelting and FOB.

Can-sheet, can and recycling counts come from company filings and trade groups, not this site’s pipeline. Nothing here is investment advice.

Prices are monthly benchmark averages that lag the market; informational only, not investment advice.